INTERNATIONAL MOTHER LANGUAGE DAY: 21 February
Christian missionaries made an incalculable contribution to the strengthening of almost all Indian languages. Their belief that God wishes to speak to us through our own culture and languages inspired them to dedicate their lives to standardise our languages.
International Mother Language Day on 21 Feb. promotes awareness of linguistic & cultural diversity. It recognizes that languages and multilingualism can advance inclusion. Historically, Bible translation has enriched many Indian languages.
Bible translation helped standardise languages by reducing them to writing, by codifying normative rules of grammar and by preparing bilingual dictionaries.
It helped accelerate the writing process of many other literary forms including prose, poetry and fiction. Also, it has helped the rapid growth of literacy thereby promoting socio-economic development.
ASSAMESE: In 1813, William Carey and Joshua Marshman of Serampore mission had translated the entire Bible as the first Assamese book in print. In 1836 Nathan Brown and Oliver Cutter arrived in Assam with a printing machine. In 3 months they produced the first Assamese primer for schools. Brown published an Assamese grammar and the first newspaper in Assam "Orunodoi" (meaning Sunrise) in 1846. Miles Bronson produced the first English–Assamese dictionary (1867). Admired for his leadership of the Assamese language agitation, which was successful in preventing the British from replacing Assamese with Bengali in the schools and courts of Assam
BENGALI: In 1777, two Moravian missionaries, Karl Fredrich Schmidt and Johannes Grassman, went from Tranquebar to Bengal and Serampore. They succeeded in producing a Bengali–German Dictionary. William Carey published a Bengali grammar in 1801, & a Bengali dictionary in 1815. His contribution to the development of Bengali prose is well acknowledged. The first vernacular newspaper was published in Bengali by Serampore missionaries in 1818.
GUJARATI: Gujarat’s first moveable type printing press was established by James Skinner and William Fyvie at Mughalsarai in 1820. Until then there were no printed books of any kind in Gujarati. The Gujarati Grammar & Dictionary were prepared by Fyvie and Skinner. The first New Testament in Gujarati was printed in 1821. Skinner & Fyvie helped develop Gujarati type-founding. Moulds for many of conjunct letters did not exist till then, & several letters were typo-graphed for the first time in this book. In 1847, William Clarkson produced a Grammar of the Gujarati Language. Rev. Josef Von Somren Taylor (1820–1881) - called the ‘Father of Gujarati Grammar’ produced Gujarati BhashanuVyakaranam (Gujarati grammar), in 1867. His son George Pritchard Taylor revised and expanded the grammar of his father.
HINDI: Rev. M. T. Adam brought out his “Hindi Bhasha ka Vyakaran” in 1827. Other grammars included Duncan Forbes' “A Grammar of Hindustani Language” (1846), Rev. W. Ethrington's “Grammar” (1870) and it’s Hindi version “Bhasha-Bhaskar” (1871). Dr Samuel H. Kellog (1839-1899) coalesced over a dozen dialects to help create today’s Hindi. His brilliant 1875 treatise “Hindi Vyakaran” was published by Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prayag, Allahabad. This is considered one of the finest grammar text books on Hindi. Kellog's 1875 Hindi grammar was titled, “Grammar of the Hindi Language: In Which Are Treated the High Hindi, Braj, Eastern Hindi of the Ramayan of Tulsi Das, also Colloquial Dialects of Rajputana, Kumaon, Avadh, Riwa, Bhojpur, Magadh, Maithila etc…” Edwin Greaves' “A Grammar of Modern Hindi” was published in 1896. Camille Bulcke's (1909–1982) research and translation work led him to gather material for an English–Hindi Dictionary (40,000 words) that is still widely used in North India.
KANNADA: William Carey in 1817, brought out a Kannada grammar book on modern lines, containing Kannada types. It was titled, “A Grammar of the Kurnata Language”. This is believed to be the first printed material ever in Kannada language. John Hands produced a Grammar and a Dictionary of Kannada in 1811 in Bellary. In 1844, the first Kannada newspaper “Samachar” was printed at the Ballari Mission Press. In 1820, John McKerrel wrote and published his “Karnataka Vyakarana” at Fort St George College, Madras. In 1859, Thomas Hodson wrote and published at the Wesleyan Mission Press, Mysore, “An Elementary Grammar of the Kannada or Canarese Language”. Ferdinand Kittel (1832–1903) compiled the first Kannada–English dictionary in 1894 (70,000 words). He is famous for his studies of the Kannada language and also composed numerous Kannada poems. Kittel wrote “Kathamale”, a Kannada work that presented the life of Jesus Christ through rhythmic meters. He also wrote for “Mangalooru Samachara”, the first Kannada newspaper started by fellow German Rev. Hermann Friedrich Mögling in 1843.
MALAYALAM: Benjamin Bailey established a printing press in Kottayam around 1820. The Basel Mission press was started in 1842, with facilities for Malayalam printing. Bailey was a linguist, botanist, and author of a Malayalam dictionary. Rev. H. Gundert published the first part of his Malayalam Grammar in 1851. He also edited the “Rajya Samacharam”, the first Malayalam journal published in Kerala in June 1847. George Matthan's “Malayalam Grammar” was published in 1863. Till the missionaries came, Malayalam language did not have a standardised spelling. They were conscious of this inconsistency. The introduction of printing by Gundert & Bailey in Kerala, and Basel Mission in Mangalore helped this process of standardisation. Punctuation is the visual representation of the meaningful pauses in a discourse consisting of sentences. Malayalam did not have such a system till the introduction of printing by missionaries.
MARATHI: William Carey published a comprehensive grammar of Marathi, “A Grammar of the Maharatta Language” in 1805. K. S. Arjun Wadekar has pointed out that Carey’s was “the first book on standard Marathi Language.” John Stevenson wrote "The Principles of Marathi Grammar", 1833. The Rev. Ganpatrao Raghunath Navalkar (1837–1922) authored “The Student's Marathi Grammar” in 1894.
MIZO: James Herbert Lorrain & Frederick W. Savidge compiled the first Lushai grammar and dictionary (1898).
MUNDARI: John Hoffman, authored 18 volumes of Encyclopaedia Mundarica, which can easily be called the Bible of Munda culture and language. Hoffmann had already published a Mundari grammar (1903).
ORIYA: The printing of the first Serampore edition of the New Testament in Oriya was done in 1809. Many Oriya types had to be specially cast. The fonts consisted of 300 separate combinations, and the expense of cutting and casting was at least a thousand rupees. Baptist Missionary Amos Sutton set up the Orissa Missionary Press in Cuttack in 1838 established the printing of Oriya in its homeland for the first time and bringing it out of the shadow of Bengali. The press also laid the foundation of modern Oriya philology. Amos Sutton in 1831 produced the first Grammar book of Oriya, and advocated Oriya's individuality. Agitated over the threat of replacing Oriya, young people launched a journal “Utkala Dipika”, with missionary support. Sutton also compiled an Oriya dictionary which was published in three volumes, the first in 1841, the second and third in 1843.
PUNJABI: William Carey published the first Punjabi grammar book in 1812. He also published the New Testament in 1815. A mission was set up at Ludhiana in 1835, where a printing press was installed for using Gurmukhi fonts. It also issued the first Punjabi grammar in 1851 followed by the publication of a Punjabi dictionary by John Newton and Levi Janvier in 1854.
TAMIL: Ziegenbalg wrote the first Tamil dictionary and translated Tamil grammar prose into Latin. He established the first Tamil–German scholarly link. Johann Phillip Fabricius picked up where Ziegenbalg left off in Bible translation, particularly Tamil Christian hymnody. Constantine Beschi (1680–1747) compiled the first Tamil lexicon, and wrote a Tamil grammar. Robert Caldwell in 1856 published “A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages”. Rev. C P Gnanamani's Tamil grammar in 1885 was gazetted as a text book. George Uglow Pope translated Tamil literary works such as Tirukural, Tiruvasagam, and Naladiar, as well as published Tamil dictionaries and grammars. John Lazarus (1845–1925) rendered the Tirukkural into English in 1885. His “Dictionary of Tamil Proverbs” in 1894 contained 10,000 proverbs which remains the most complete collection ever made.
TELUGU: William Carey composed a Telugu Grammar in 1812 and published it in 1814. This book is available at the National Library, Calcutta. He published the Telugu New Testament in 1818 and the first five books of Moses from the Old Testament in 1821. Charles Philip Brown, the son of a missionary, compiled a Telugu–English and English–Telugu Dictionary (1845–53), and Grammar (1840), and helped translate the Bible into Telugu. Benjamin Schultze provided a Telugu version of the New Testament — the first prose work in Telugu. His most remarkable contribution is “Grammatica Telugica” (Telugu Grammar) published in Halle in 1728, written in Latin and Telugu, with an introduction in English. J.C. Morris edited a book of Telugu selections along with translations into English, their grammatical analysis with a glossary of revenue terms (1827). William Howell published his Compendium of the Andhra Vyakaranam, or a Catechism of Telugu Grammar in 1834. Rev. A. Riccaz, published “An Abridgement of Telugu Grammar” (1869). H. Morris' “Simplified Grammar of the Telugu Language” (1890) is another notable contribution. Albert Henry Arden (1841–1897), Missionary of the CMS Masulipatam, wrote "A Progressive Grammar of the Telugu Language" in three parts in 1873. In 1879 he wrote "A Companion Telugu Reader to Arden's Progressive Telugu Grammar".
Sources: (1) “Let there be India!” by Babu K Varghese (WOC, 2016); (2) Archive.Org; (3) Online mission and other reports.
