The Hindu Business Line : Golden treasure

Part of lost dictionary: Retired octogenarian professor Sunil Kr. Chattopadhaya flips through the 200-year-old manuscript of a dictionary on 13 different Indian languages by William Carey at Srerampore College in Hooghly district of Bengal. William Carey (August 17, 1761, to June 9, 1834), an English Protestant missionary, came to India during 1793 and settled at Srirampur. He started translating literature and sacred writings from the original Sanskrit into English to make them accessible to his own countrymen. He also was making the polyglot dictionary to understand all the then Indian languages. On March 11, 1812, a fire in the print shop damaged all the works. Amongst the losses were many irreplaceable manuscripts, including much of Carey’s translation of Sanskrit literature and a dictionary of Sanskrit and related languages, which would have been a seminal philological work had it been completed. A part of the lost dictionary is still available at the William Carey Library of Srerampore College. - A. Roy Chowdhury

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