108 BENGALI LITERATURE punch would cost a guinea a piece. After several fruitless attempts, when the project had appeared almost incapable of accomplishment, Carey saw a wooden printing press advertised in Caleutta for £40. Heat once purchased it at Rs. 400 and set it up at Madnabati. It was from this old press, subsequently removed to Srirampur that the first edition of the Bengali New Testament was printed.! The types were set with the knowledge of a first-rate printer by Ward with his own hand, assisted by Carey’s son, Felix. The second edition was
1 Smith, op. cit. p. 181 ; E. Carey op. cit. p. 380. 2 If we leave aside Ellerton’s New Testament and Thomas’s version of Genesis and other books of the Bible (1791), this is the first effort at an entire translation of the Bible into Bengali. Eller- ton’s version, however, was not published till 1820, and Thomas himself got much help from Carey in his translation. Of John F. Ellerton (1768-1820), nothing much is known except that he was an indigo-planter and was the first to establish a Bengali school in Maldah. He wrote (1) মঙ্গল সমাচার Atfss afos | Calcutta 1819. (৪)মঙ্গল সমাচার যোহন রচিত। 0810018, 1819 in Bengali and English (3) জগত্তারক প্রভু যিশু খীষ্টের এ মঙ্গল সমাচার । ০৮079 ৮৮৮ 11652006101) 10:7)919100 Dane ach by J. F. Ellerton, Caleutta 1820, pp. 9938. This last-mentioned work, though discontinued for a time on learning that Carey was engaged on a similar work was at last printed by the Calcutta Bible Society. See the Fifteenth Report of the British and Foreign Bible Soc. London 1819, pp. 214 and 319; 1818, App. p. 24 (4) গুরু শিষ্যের প্রশ্নোত্তর ধারাতে সষ্ট্যাদির বিবরণ ০৮ Account of the Crea- tion of the World and of the First Age, in the form of a dialogue between a master and his pupil, Calcutta 1820. In Cal. Rev. vol. viii, 1850, this work is probably referred to as #f*7#]. See Long, Introduction to Adam’s Reports : Smith, op. cit. p. 145: Cal. Rev. 1850: The Bengal Obituary (1851) p. 144: Blumhardt, Catalogue. For Thomas, see Life of John Thomas by C. B. Lewis (1873). The books of the Old Testament, as printed by tke Serampore Press (1801-9) are in 4 vols. viz., 1. Pentateuch, 1801; 2. Joshua-Esther, 1809; 3. Job- Song of Solomon, 1804; 4. Isiah-Malachi, 1805. According to the Serampore Memoirs, however, the correct dates of publication are;
