Home › C › Carey (WILLIAM an English Oriental)

Carey (WILLIAM an English Oriental)

WILLIAM, an English Oriental scholar and missionary, born in Northamptonshire, Aug. 17, 1761. He was early apprenticed to a shoemaker, but his natural turn for languages, and his zeal for the spread of the Gospel, were too strong to be overcome. With the little assistance he could procure he acquired Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and likewise studied theology. In 1786 he became pastor of a Baptist congregation at Moulton, and in 1787 was appointed to a similar situation in Leicester. In 1793 he sailed for the East Indies as a Baptist missionary, and in 1800, in conjunction with Marshman, Ward, and others, he founded the missionary college at Serampore. Here he had a printing press, and issued various translations of the Scriptures. His first work was a "Bengali Grammar." It was followed by the "Hitopadesha," in the Mahratta tongue, a "Grammar of the Telinga and Carnatic ," and a "Bengali Lexicon."

Under his direction the whole Bible was translated into 6, and the New Testament into 21 Hindustani dialects. He was long professor of Sanskrit, Mahratta, and Bengali, in Calcutta. He died in Serampore, India, June 9, 1834.