The great Serampore trio were William Carey, William Ward and Joshua Marshman. They were described as self-made men but no man is self-made. They had natural gifts which they developed in a remarkable way.

Carey mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew and other languages before he sailed for India. In the eighteenth century there was a generation of highly cultured English men who travelled extensively on the continent and elsewhere. In 1786, when Carey was a young man, Gibbon, the historian, says that 40,000 Englishmen were travelling or living abroad at one time. Most of them were accomplished classical scholars. So was Carey. He may not have travelled abroad but he was a man, who, with Gods help, developed his exceptional gifts in the realm of languages, and with the help of his friends, Ward and Marshman built a foundation as firm as they ever hoped. Today their names are honoured for the work done at a time in India when the East India Company was far from cooperative.

Joshua Marshman was a translator and we might well pause and reflect on the qualities of such a man, who mastered the Chinese language in India and was responsible for translating and printing the Bible in Chinese.

William Ward was a trained printer who also had family connections with Hull. Ward owed a great deal to the encouragement he received from the George Street Church in Hull, where a handful of working men and women encouraged him to study for the ministry.

In a letter home, Ward once described the Serampore Press: 'I am in a small room, reading or writing, and looking over the office which is more than 170 ft long. There you find Indians translating the Scriptures into the different tongues or correcting the proof sheets. You observe laid out in cases types in Arabic, Persian, Nagari, Telugu, Panjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Chinese, Oriya, Burmese, Greek, Hebrew and English. Hindus Mussulmans and Christians are busy - composing, correcting, distributing. Beyond the office are the varied type casters, besides a group of men making ink, and in a spacious open walled round place, our paper mill, for we manufacture our own paper.'

In general the picture has changed but little. A printing office is similar in many respects to what it was 140 years ago. Type has still to be set by hand. Though there are many automatic typecasting machines proofs have still to be read by men.

Baptist Mission Press does not have to make its own ink or paper. Paper is supplied mainly by a firm which turns out 100s of tons per week and which owes its beginnings to the skill, foresight, and enterprise of men like Carey, Marshman and Ward.

Long before industrialists recognized the potentialities of the paper making trade in Bengal, Serampore made its own paper. One of the first machines used for this purpose (6) attracted so much local attention that villagers (7) came to Serampore from miles around to see the engine of fire at work. Today there is still a brand of paper produced at the mills across the river (8) from Serampore College that is known as Serampore brand.

Similarly the Serampore missionaries were pioneers of English journalism in Bengal. The periodical, The Friend of India, (9) was the forerunner of the daily national newspaper, The Statesman. Today the Statesman carries on the front page the words, 'The Statesman incorporating The Friend of India.'

In Carey's day every piece of type and every space was set by hand. Today at Baptist Mission Press you can see automatic machines such as the Linotype, operated by one man and setting solid lines of type, and the Monotype, which requires two men, one at the keyboard and the other at the caster, setting every letter separately.

Every day you can hear the clack-clack of the Monotype casting machines, casting type that will either be used in Christian literature or in scientific books or school magazines.

For more than 100 years Baptist Mission Press has specialized in the production of scientific literature for the Asiatic Society, which is the leading scientific organization in the Far East.

The Press also has had a long standing connection with the Bose Institute, another scientific research establishment which was founded by India's most famous scientist, J C Bose. Some years ago the 100th anniversary of his birth was celebrated and scientists from all over the world contributed to the centenary volume which Baptist Mission Press printed, and which was acknowledged as a production of unusual quality.

Over the years the management of Baptist Mission Press have given their services on various technical committees for the Government of West Bengal Press and the Calcutta University Press, in addition to the Governing Body of the Calcutta School of Printing Technology.

The Press building which accommodates the administrative section is the original building, erected in 1818 and which Carey must have seen many times (10). The work of the Serampore Press finally came to an end when it was realised that a Press in Calcutta would be more strategically placed (11).

The office of the Press Superintendent has two pictures on the wall. One is of William Carey, of course, the other is of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of letterpress printing.

In the book, The Life of William Carey, we read he set his heart upon entering Tibet. He was frustrated for various reasons in his day but 150 years afterwards (before the country was taken over) the Tibetan Government came to the Press to print a special of work in colour because there was no Press at the time that could undertake the work in Tibet. The order had to be packed in a certain size of box, so that they could be strapped conveniently to the backs of mules and yaks which carried them over the mountains to Tibet, a ten days journey from the border.

There are very few Presses in India with Tibetan type (12).

Tibetan characters are also used in the Bhutanese language and orders for printing for the Bhutan Government are received from time to time. The Chief Minister called personally some time ago with orders for marriage registration certificates and other documents.

Frequently during the cold weather there are many overseas visitors. They come from America, from Britain, from Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Germany, and many other countries. Some are impressed by the fact that Baptist Mission Press was established in Calcutta as far back as 1818; others, by the fact that we have worked for one Society, the Asiatic Society, for over 100 years. Occasionally odd facts about the Press strike the visitor. One was astonished that we have a compositor, a Hindu, who knows very little English, incidentally, who can compose type in Greek.

It would be possible to give a long list of languages in which Baptist Mission Press print. Three or four may be worth mentioning because they are unusual. There are Koch Rabha, Riang and Daphla which are used by the hill people in Assam, and Wa. Wa is a language you do not often hear of, because it is used in Burma, on the borders of China and Burma. We looked at a map the other day and found that it is still marked "Uncharted Territory". This was a piece of printing we did for the American Baptists, a hymn book which could not be printed in Burma (13). Today restrictions are such that it is very difficult to get into or out of Burma and I doubt it would be possible to print such a book today.

 

6. The Serampore Trio imported the first ever steam engine into India in 1820. It was used to crush wood pulp for paper making.

7. It was fascinating not just to local villagers but also to the British in Calcutta.

8. There was then a large paper mill at Titaghur, just south of Barrackpore, which supplied the Press with paper. It sadly is no more as the Indian paper industry cannot compete with cheap imported paper.

9. This was published and written by Joshua Marshman and his son John Clark Marshman.

10. I have it on the word of my aunt, Peggie Ellis, that William Carey is known to have stayed at the Press, probably in the Superintendent's flat on the top floor. This was Peggie's flat when her husband, Norman Ellis, was Superintendent.

11. Much, much more important was the lifting of legal restrictions on the printing of Christian literature within the territory of the East India Company.

12. Baptist Mission Press created the type and printed the first Tibetan Dictionary. Today the design of the computer font for the Tibetan language is based on that Baptist Mission Press type.

13. Sometimes Baptist Mission Press is confused with what used to be the American Baptist Mission Press in Rangoon. That was closed down and looted by the Japanese during World War Two.

 

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