The Life of John Wilson D D F R S Author:George Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. 1829-1836. ORGANISATION AND FIRST FRUIT OF THE MISSION. The Languages of the People—If necessary for Officials, much more for Missionaries — ... more »Foundation of Wilson's Oriental Scholarship — Masters Marathee so as to preach his first Sermon in six Months—Tentative efforts at Hurnee—First visit to a Hindoo House and Discussion with a Parsee —Prohibition of Suttee : Letter to Lord William Bentinck—" Plan of Operations in the Island of Bombay"—His first European Friends— Establishes the Oriental Christian Spectator—Census of Bombay—Wilson and Duff—Presbyterian Constitution of a Native Church—Transferred from the Scottish Missionary Society to the General Assembly—Progress of the Mission to 1836—Letters to Mr. J. Jordan Wilson—The Freeness of the Gospel. If a knowledge of the language of the people, vernacular and, where possible, classical also, is the indispensable qualification of every official, so that it is carefully provided for by the competitive examinations in England, and by the professional tests in the four great groups of Provinces in India, how much more is it required by the foreign missionary. The assistant-magistrate, even the district officer who rules a million of people in one of the 200 counties of the Indian Empire; the judge who, outside of the three English cities, hears cases and writes his decisions in the prevailing language of the province, may be content with a merely official use of the Marathee or Goojaratee, the Tamul or Telugoo, the Hindee or Hindostanee, the Bengalee or Oorya, to say nothing of the Persian and the Sanskrit which enrich all the thirty languages of our Indian subjects. There is no conscientious civil or military officer, however, who will not value his linguistic knowledge for the highest social as well as political ...« less