2. Protestant Missions

The first Protestant missionaries to arrive in India were Lutherans, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg (q.v.) and Heinrich Plutschau, in 1705. They came under the patronage of the king of Denmark to the Danish settlement at Tranquebar. Ziegenbalg began the translation of the Bible into Tamil. In 1719 Benjamin Schultze arrived and carried on his successful labor in Tanjore. He completed the translation of the Bible in 1725, which was the first translation of the Bible into an Indian language. The East India Company were not favorable to missionary enterprise in their sphere of influence, and deported back to England those who attempted to work within it. William Carey (q.v.), of the Baptist Mission, arrived at Calcutta in 1793, settled at Serampur, fifteen miles from Calcutta, at that time a Danish settlement, and he and his colleagues began at once the task of translating the Bible into many languages. Within ten years this book was translated and printed in part or whole, into thirtyone languages. The London Missionary Society began its work in 1798, when Nathaniel Forsyth was sent to Calcutta, who was joined in 1812 by Mr. and Mrs. May. They devoted themselves to educational work so successfully that by the end of 1815 Forsyth,had under his charge twenty schools with 1,651 pupils, 258 of these being Brahmans. The same society began work in Ceylon in 1805, in Travancore in 1806, in Surat, Western India, in 1815, but transferred its work in Gujarat to the Irish Presbyterian Mission in 1847. The East India Company refused to allow missionaries to India to be carried in any of its vessels, and in order to reach India the first missionaries had to go to Copenhagen, whence, in a Danish vessel, they sailed to Tranquebar, and thence to Ceylon. The first missionaries to western India, Gordon Hall (q.v.) and Samuel Nott, arrived at Bombay Feb. 11, 1813, sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Owing to the policy of opposition to all missionary enterprise which characterized the East India Company, and on account of suspicion because they were Americans, they were forbidden to work in Bombay, and were about to be deported, when a change in the charter of the Company left them at liberty to prosecute their work. They assumed the name of the American Marathi Mission. Educational work was actively pressed; the first school for boys in western India on modern methods was started by this mission in the city of Bombay in 1815, and the first school for girls in India in 1824. The Church Missionary Society of England sent out its first representative in 1814. In 1807 five Anglican chaplains in Calcutta had obtained a grant of money from the Church Missionary Society in London for the translation of the Scriptures and the employment of Indian Christian readers. The first reader employed was Abdul Masih, a converted Mohammedan. The first missionaries of this society were Charles Theophilus Ewald Rhenius and J. C. Schnarr6, sent in 1814 to Madras; later Schnarr5 Was transferred to Tranquebar. Norton, Greenwood, and Gattbald Schorter followed in 1815. The first missionary of the Church of Scotland, D. Mitchell, arrived in Bombay Jan., 1823, and started work at Bankot, on the coast south of Bombay. Under the same agency Alexander Duff arrived at Calcutta in 1830, and began a ,work ranking among the most effective yet accomplished. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel began its work in India in 1826. Since then many societies and many missionaries from many lands have been engaged 'in spreading a knowledge of Christianity throughout the length and breadth of India. Protestant acti-ity has been shown (i) in the direct preaching of the Christian faith, (2) in translating and circulating the Bible, (3) in preparing and circulating a vernacular Christian literature, (4) in education from primary village schools to colleges, (5) in medical work, (6) in industrial education, and (7) in a great variety of philanthropic institutions. Protestant missionaries were the pioneers in modern education for both boys and girls.