which form the western boundary of the valley of the Irrawadi.

More than thirty different written cultivated languages are found within the re

Aids in translating the Karen Bible.gion whose outlines have been thus low-sketched; but not in one had a single book of the Bible been written. The brahmins had brought the Vedas from the Imaus to the mountains of Arracan; the Magi, the Zendavesta from Media to Bengal; and the Imaums, the Koran from Mecca to Calcutta; but no one had brought the Bible into any part of this territory, till the Northamptonshire shoemaker ascended those narrow stairs, an outcast from the most Christian nation on earth, because he proposed to do for Christ what the brahmin had done for Vishnu, the fireworshipper for Zoroaster, and the Mohammedan for the false prophet. Still, before he was laid aside in the little grave-yard near us, he had carried the Scriptures, entire, or in part, through the press in every one of those languages;- unquestionably, the greatest literary work on record; and as good as great; and more glorious in its results than any event since the day of Pentecost.

We were seated at tea in the roofed upper room of an obscure house, in an obscure part of the village of Serampore, when I remarked: Some three thousand five hundred years ago, the sons of Madai were wending their way through the passes of the Hindu Koosh; and fifty years ago, when Carey, driven from Calcutta by British oppression, took refuge, the first night, in the back room in which we are now seated, those Pali and Sanscrit speaking grandsons of Japheth had spread themselves over Afghanistan and Beloochistan, west of the Indus; over Cashmere, Scinde, and Gujarat, in the region of the Punjaub; over Ajmere, the land of the Rajpoots, and Malwah, the country of the Marattas, in central Hindustan; over Bundelkund and the kingdom of Oude on the upper Ganges; over Behar, Magudha, Bengal, and Orissa, in the lower part of the valley, driving the Scythic race that had preceded them, to the right over the Vinaya into Southern India, and to the left upon the highlands of the Himalaya; crowding themselves forward into Assam and Munnipore, as far as the mountains

When Judson was refused a restingplace for his foot in British India, he fled, not knowing whither he went, to idolatrous Burmah, where he rested not

till he had left the Burmese the rich legacy of one of the best versions of the Bible in the world.

were the pagoda-crowned hills with their sacred fanes, and the scattered town at their feet, with Mopoon Point, a ledge of laterite famous for its carnelians and chalcedonies, pushing itself half across the river to form a quiet bay south of the city.

The first Karens baptized in the northern provinces were baptized by Mr. Wade in the neighborhood of Maulmain, in February, 1831; and when Sau Quala reached that province, the statistics to the close of 1832 show the whole number baptized there to be eighty-three, and at Tavoy one hundred and seventy-four. While Quala was at Maulmain, Ko Thahbyu went over to Rangoon, the first messenger of salvation to the Karens of Burmah Proper; and the first Karens baptized in Rangoon

The time to take incipient measures for a version of the Bible in Karen had now arrived, but it was first necessary to form an alphabet. The question of the character to be adopted might have delayed the work materially; but when Mr. Wade commenced printing Karen in the Burmese character, I determined to follow his plan without discussion. As he was compelled by sickness to leave the work when just commenced, and to return to America, I took counsel with Dr. Judson, and concluded to send two of my best assistants to Maulmain to study with Panlah,-now pastor of the Karen church at Newville on the Dahgyne-one of the men who had aided Mr. Wade in the formation of the alpha-were baptized on the tenth of November bet, and in adapting Burman letters to Karen sounds. Accordingly, Quala and Kaulapau, now the ordained pastor of the church at Matah, went up to Maulmain in January, 1833, where they remained about three months.

of the same year, 1833. This first baptism of Karens in the Burman empire, was signalized by the administrator, Ko Thah-a, being seized and thrown into prison; but the old gentleman has lived long enough to find himself an object of respect to the rulers around him, and to the whole Christian world, as the pastor of the first Christian church in the first city of British Burmah; and to see the four he then baptized, multiplied a thousand fold in his own province.

Sau

When my two assistants returned from Maulmain, I placed Kaulapau at Matah, to teach school, and when I went thither, six months afterwards, I found thirty-nine of his pupils able to read their own language intelligibly. Quala was retained in Tavoy, with a class of assistants whom I was preparing to occupy new stations in the south part of the province. He remained with me the ten following years, assisting me in the translation of the New Testament.

This journey to Maulmain was a great event in Quala's life, and indeed in the history of all the Karen clans in the south, not an individual of whom had been known to pass beyond the uninhabited waste between the sources of Tavoy and Ye rivers, and the Tenasserim and the Attaran, since they first passed it in their emigration from the north, untold centuries ago. Quala had traditions of this emigration which retained the Karen names of Balu Island, the Attaran, and Salwen rivers; so, when he came to Maulmain, he was on classic ground, at the homes of his ancestors, and he loved to walk out at evening on the narrow ridge of hills back of the town, where, looking south-west, the valley of the Attaran was seen on the left, dotted with grotesque piles of mountain limestone, till lost in the misty distance; while on the right, the Salwen, widening its banks towards the sea, was in full view, bounded by Balu Island on the edge of the horizon; and between, the theological, metaphysical, and scien

In translating the Scriptures into Karen, difficulties had to be overcome, which had not been met in the languages in which Indian versions had hitherto been made. In all the languages of Hindustan and Ceylon, the Sanscrit furnishes

tific terms; which it does as perfectly | middle of the night to procure me a as the Greek and Latin do for the mod- light, when sleeping in zayats or in the ern European tongues. Indeed, many jungle, on hearing some one repeat a of the terms in English science may be scrap of poetry, or some traditionary derived from the Sanscrit, as easily as reminiscence. As anticipated, I obfrom the Greek; for the Greek roots tained many important words for the are identical with the Sanscrit. For translation, that were not to be obtained instance, barometer is from the Sans- in any other way, and settled many crit phara, weight, and masa, measure; doubtful terms by authorities that were hydrogen, from udra, water, and jan, to decisive. produce; astronomy, from tara, star, and nema, precept; cheiroptera from kara, hand, and patta, wing.

very general one that mahnut was the | Among the fragments are several singugreat enemy of Gaudama, the Buddhist lar pieces in relation to the Karen Bible, god, as Satan is the enemy of the true or book, which have manifestly been God; and yet it is the best term found composed since Europeans went to India; in the Burmese language. The term and, notwithstanding their fabulous charfor heaven in the Burman Bible fails, in acter, they show the high estimate the like manner, to convey the signification Karens have ever placed on Karen books, of the word in the original Scriptures. how they have occupied their minds, It signifies, according to Judson's defi- and how well prepared they were to apnition, "the expanse of heaven, any preciate the Bible, when presented to vacant expanse, whether above or be- them in their own tongue. low." To the mind of a Burman, it is a vacuum. There is no better word in Burman; but in Karen, the word used suggests the place where God, who created the heavens and the earth, with an innumerable company of angels who never sinned, resides; a place of happiness, free from all iniquity, from all sorrow. These examples, which might be easily multiplied, show how much more difficult it is, in the first instance, to make a Burman understand the subjects of the gospel message than a Karen; and proves, by the way, how very little can rationally be expected from the general distribution of the Bible, without the words of the living teacher.

"The Elders relate," commences one myth, "that formerly there was a truthful white foreigner who went trading. While engaged in his mercantile pursuits, he came to the city of our younger brother Sale.* That city is a city of upright, truthful men. Through the white foreigners coming to trade with them, they had heard that the Karen nation was very poor, whom they denominated elder brother Paku.† Having destroyed the insects in the seeds of black cotton,‡ and red cotton, by putting the seeds into hot water, they prayed,' If this cotton reaches our elder brother Paku, let it not die; let every seed vegetate. But should it be planted before coming to his hands, let not a single grain grow! Then they delivered it to the white foreigner, the captain of the ship, and said to him, "Carry this cotton to our elder brother Paku.' When the white foreign merchant and ship captain had reached his own country, he thought to himself - We will carry this cotton to its destination after multi

But besides theological terms, a knowledge of the figurative language of a tongue is indispensable to produce a correct version of the Bible; and Sau Quala was therefore employed in committing to paper every poem or story that any one knew. The imagination is as strongly developed in a Karen, as in a Greek. The sun walks the heavens in red garments during the hot season, but robed in white during the cool *The Karens regard this term as used in weather; the winds are a tribe of demi-stories, to designate any foreign nation, Chinese, Hindu, or European; but, originally, it was probably a specific name. plet says:

gods, residing in a cave; and the thunder is a bird, which produces rain when it screams, and lightning when it claps its wings. Without a written literature, I found they had a mass of fictitious stories in their memories, which, in the long rainy nights, they were in the habit of relating to each other; as idle people in civilized countries read novels.

Thus Quala created for me and for others after me, a Karen literature in prose and verse, of several manuscript volumes.

An old cou

"Brother Sali came by sea, None so true and fair as he." †The name by which one of the Toungoo tribes designate themselves.

"There is an island," say Karen geographers, "in the ocean, under the constellation of the Great Bear," [Dr. Kane's open polar sea!] "where the inhabitants cultivate every species of cotton. They have white cotton, red cotton, yellow cotton, and black cotton, so that it is unnecessary to dye the thread."