missionaries, and from these to the native translator to the Danish government. The notes and corrections thus obtained were carefully collated by Fabricius, and the whole translation was again subjected by him to a searching revision. It was printed at the mission press at Tranquebar between the years 1777 and 1782, under the sjiecial care of two missionaries, one of whom was Dr. Rottler. Fabricius was esteemed an "unparalleled Tamil scholar," and bis translation long held the rank of the standard Tamil version of the Scriptures in the missions of the Society for the Propagation of the Gos- pel in Tanjore and IMadras, and partly in those in Tiii- nevelly, and also in the missions of the Leipsic Lutheran Missionary Society.
The editions of the two versions of the New Test, above mentioned, printed by the Danisli missionaries prior to the commencement of the present century, amoimt in all to fourteen, besides two versions of the Old Test. But the number of copies issued being very far from adequate to the wants of the native Christians, the deplorable scarcity of the Scriptures in the Tamil country was first pressed upon the notice of the British and Foreign Bible Society in a letter from the Rev. Dr. Buchanan, dated Madura, 1806; and in 1818 an edition consisting of 5000 copies was completed by the Seram- pore missionaries, the text being that of Fabricius,
As a great demand for the Scriptures still continued throughout the Tamil countr}*, even after the circida- tion of this large edition, it seemed necessary to take immediate measures for issuing further supplies. The want of copies of the Scriptures appeared to be particu- larly felt at Ceylon, where the number of native Chris- tians speaking the Tamil language was estimated at 45,000. Besides the edition of the New Test, published at Colombo in 1743, as above mentioned, a version of the Pentateuch, translated by IMr. De Milho, had also been printed in Ceylon, under the patronage of the Dutch government, in 1790. These editions, however, had been long exhausted, and the people in general were almost destitute of the Scriptures. It was there- fore deemed advisable not only to issue another edition, but also to obtain such a revision of the existing version as might render it intelligible to the Tamil population of Ceylon and of the adjacent continent. This impor- tant version was committed to the Rev. C. T. E. Rhe- nius, of the Church Mission, subject to the superintend- ence of the Rev. Dr. Rottler (who had formerly assisted in carrying the version of Fabricius through the press) and to the inspection of the missionaries at Trichinopoly, Tanjore, and Tranquebar. To secure the greater accu- racy of the work, a committee of translation was ap- pointed at Madras in 1821. In 1829 Rhenius's version seemed to have been completed, and from the time of its appearance it has been used in the missions of the Church ^Missionary Society, and in those of the London Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionarj' Society, and the American Board of Missions,
But neither Fabricius's version nor Rhenius's being in universal use among Tamil Christians, neither version had acquired among them that prescrii)tive reverence and authority which are conceded to the authorized English version (except by Roman Catholics) wherever the English language is spoken. Fabricius's version, though admitted by all to be verj' faithful to the origi- nal, was regarded by Tamil scholars in general as too frequenth' unidiomatical and obscure; while Rhenius's version, though generally written in clear, idiomatic Tamil, was regarded by some of those by whom it was used, and by all who were accustomed to Fabricius, as too paraphrastic, as departing too fretpiently, without sufficient warrant, from the renderings adopted in the principal European versions, and as needlessly differing from Fabricius's forms of expression, even when they happened to be perfectly correct.
For the sake of having a version which should he generally acceptable to 'I'amil Christians and Tamil scholars, the Rev. P. Percival, assisted by missionaries
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in Jaffna, Ceylon, undertook in 1849 a new version, known as the '-Tentative Version," wliich has proved to be a very valuable contribution to the work of Tamil Biblical revision.
The Romanists, who had managed to evade the ne- cessity of publishing any portion of tlie Holy Scriptures in Tamil during the 300 years in which they had been laboring in the Tamil country, were induced in 1857 to publish at Pondicherry a translation of their own of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. This translation has been made from the Latin Vulgate, not from the original Greek, and, where it is a good translation, may be regarded as a reproduction of Fabricius, with a still more excessive zeal for literality. Where it differs from Fabricius, though occasionally it succeeds in giv- ing a happy turn to the expression, it more often pre- sents so curious a mixture of high and low Tamil, and the general character of the composition is so rugged and uncouth, that even the heads of the Roman commu- nity themselves need have very little fear that this long- delayed, reluctantly published translation of a portion of the Scriptures should be too generally read by their people.
Taking all these circumstances into account, and con- sidering the evils arising from the existence and use among Tamil Christians of a variety of versions of the Tamil New Test., it was felt that anotlier effort was in the highest degree desirable to secure to the Tamil peo- ple a version which should be worthy of being accepted by all religious communities in the Tamil country, how- ever they might differ in various other particulars. Accordingly delegates were selected from the various missionary bodies in the Tamil-speakmg district, Tlie first meeting was held at Palamcotta. It commenced on April 29, 18(51, and closed on June 18, during which period tlie delegates worked nine hours a day. In 1863 the revision of the Tamil New Test., under the edito- rial supervision of the Rev. H. Bower, was completed.