years. At length discord arising among them, one of their chiefs called in the aid of an Indian king, who came upon them with a great army, slew a part, carried a part into captivity, and drove the rest from Cranganor, which he reduced to a state of ruin resembling the desolation of Jerusalem. Some of the exiles fled to Cochin, where they have since been joined by numbers of their brethren from Ashkenaz, Egypt, Tsoba, and other places:

The White Jews, besides the Old Testament, have in almost every house, other Hebrew books, either printed or in manuscript. Most of the printed Hebrew of Europe has found its way to Cochin through the medium of the Portuguese and Dutch commerce of former times. They have but one synagogue, and are confined to a single town, which is almost wholly inhabited by the two sorts of Jews.

This is the colony about which the late President Stiles wrote to Sir William Jones, proposing an examination of their copy of the Pentateuch. Owing to the death of Sir William that examination was deferred till the year 1806, when it was made by Dr. Buchanan in person, much to the satisfaction of the learned and Christian world.*

the Mission was fixed at Tranquebar, a Danish settlement on the Coromandel coast, in the south-eastern part of Hindostan. Ziegenbalg was educated at the University of Halle in Germany, and in his 23d year was ordained by Burman, the Lutheran bishop of Zealand. He sailed for India, with his assistant, John Ernest Grundler, in October, 1705, and arrived at Tranquebar July 9th, 1706. On the 14th day of August, 1707, he consecrated a house which they had erected for the public worship of God. The same year he baptised the first heathen, and established a Christian church among the Hindoos. At his entrance on the mission he commenced a translation of the Scriptures into the Tamul, the vernacular language of Coromandel, which he lived just long enough to complete.

The king of Denmark early settled on the Missionaries 2000 crowns a year, payable from the Post Office, and often doubled that sum by extraordinary pres ents. Germany also furnished large contributions.

Professor Francke, of Halle, a learned Lutheran divine, and the OrphanHouse established by him in that city, made liberal and constant remittances. But the greatest pecuniary aid came from England. From the year 1709, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, composed of bishops and members of the Church of England, extended a very liberal patronage to the Missionaries, furnishing them with a printing press, paper, and other materials for printing,-with books also and money. The sum sent from England in 1713 amounted to 11947. sterling.

The Tamul New Testament was printed in 1714. The same year Ziegenbalg visited Europe, and was honored with an audience by George the First,of England, and attended a sitting of the Bishops in the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The King and the Society encouraged him to proceed with the translation, and afterwards honored and animated the Missionaries with their correspond

ence.

In the year 1715, the King of Denmark erected a College at Copenhagen for the support and extension of the Mission.

In 1719, after the labor of fourteen years, Ziegenbalg completed the Tamul Bible, (the first edition of the Scriptures that was published in the East,) and having finished his work, went to rest on the 25th day of February of the same year. Grundler survived him about twelve months. Their bodies were laid on opposite sides of the altar in the church which they had erected at Tranquebar.

In the course of a century from the commencement of the mission, these eminent servants of God were followed by more than fifty others, all educated in the universities of Germany, and all, like themselves, of the Lutheran church. Certain rules in the Church of England in reference to the education necessary to ordination, compelled the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to draw their Missionaries from the Continent; and as they sought those who had received ordination from a Protestant bishop, they applied of course to the Lutherans.

This Society not only fostered

the Mission at Tranquebar, but in the year 1728, established a new mission at Madras, or rather, at Vepery in the suburbs, where they have continued to support two missionaries, and furnished them with a printing press. In 1737 they took another stand, and settled two missionaries at Cudulore, or Fort St. David's.

The mission at Tranquebar, as it was established by the Protestant churches of Denmark and Germany at a Danish settlement, and depended chiefly for its support on the royal College of Copenhagen, has been considered exclusively the Danish mission. But the missionaries at the differrent stands have acted together in all matters requiring union, and in a more general sense view themselves as combined in the same mission. From the press at Tranquebar, in conjunction with that attached to the OrphanHouse at Halle, have proceeded volumes in Arabic, Syriac, Hindostanee, Tamul, Telinga, Portuguese, Danish, and English. Among others, the Book of Psalms in the Hindostanee language and Arabic character, has issued from the Tranquebar press. In the year 1742, there were at this stand eight Missionaries, two native preachers, three catechists of the first order, with others of an inferior rank, and a proportionate number of assist-. ants. Their numbers have since been thinned, and the mission has languished.

In 1749, the celebrated Swartz, "the apostle of the East," who was destined to rescue the missionary character from the contempt into which it was sinking, commenced his useful labors. He was educated at Halle, in

Germany, and was every way qualified for the important undertaking. The King of Tanjore, in whose capital he resided, was so much his friend, that in 1787, he made an appropriation of land, of the yearly income of five hundred pagodas, (about $550,) for the permanent support of Christian Missionaries in his dominions. The mission of Swartz was protracted to near half a century: He died on the 13th of February, 1798, and at his death bequeathed the whole of his property to the Mission, an act of generosity which was afterwards imitated by the venerable Gericke. His body was deposited in the Mission-Garden at Tanjore, and covered with a granite stone. The East-India Company have since erected to his memory a marble monument in the church of St. Mary at Madras.

After the death of Swartz nine Missionaries remained in Coromandel; three at Tranquebar, three at Tanjore, two at Vepery, and one at Tritchinopoly. They seem to have been distributed in the following manner: at Tranquebar, Dr. John, Dr. Rottler, and Mr. Schreyfogel; at Tanjore, Messrs. Kohioff, Janicke, and Holtzberg; at Vepery, Messrs. Gericke and Pezold; at Tritchinopoly, Mr. Pohle. One of the two native preachers had died at Tranquebar the preceding year; the other resided at Palamcotta, the southmost place in the peninsula containing a Christian church.

Letters from Madras under date of January, 1805, state that Mr. Gericke had been removed by death; that Dr. Rottler by particular request had come from

t.

Tranquebar to supply his place; that Mr. Pezold had been in Bengal teaching the Tamul language, and had just returned; and that six new missionaries, sent out by the London Missionary Society, and designed for different stations, had lately landed at Tranquebar. One of these, it appears by a later account, continued at that station.

When Dr. Buchanan visited the Tamul country, in the summer of 1806, he found three Missionaries at Tranquebar, Mr. Kohloff alone at Tanjore, (Mr. ænicke being dead, and Mr. Hoitzberg probably gone to Cudulore,) and the aged Mr. Pohle at Tritchinopoly. Mr. Horst was in the country, but where stationed does not appear. As the churches of Tanjore had never been in possession of a printing press, the copies of the Scriptures found among them were few and imperfect. The measures since taken by the British and Foreign Bible Society to supply that deficiency, will be noticed in another place. Dr. Buchanan found the Mission languishing for want of support. Two of its sources, the Mission College at Copenhagen, and the Orphan-House at Halle, had been dried up by the war in Europe, and its future supplies of men and money were expected only from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. So great were the necessities of the southern churches, that Mr. Kohloff was obliged to advance from

This seems to have been the person mentioned in the following March by Dr. Buchanan as having been emin the College of Fort William. ployed to teach the Tamul language Mem. p. 10.

GENERAL VIEW.

This number will close with a 'general view of the different agents that were employed antecedent to the Baptist Mission, to introduce into Eastern Asia some knowledge of the religion of the Bible.

(1.) The Black and the White Jews.

(2.) The Syrian Christians.

(3.) The Christians of Western Ásia, who from time immemorial have travelled into the East for the purposes of commerce. Some of them have settled in the country. There are now in India seven Armenian, and two Greek churches. The Armenian churches are at Bombay, Surat, Madras, Calcutta, and three other places in Bengal. To them belong one bishop, (who resides at Bombay,) and thirteen priests. The Greek churches are at Calcutta and Dacca in Bengal; and to them are attached four priests.*

(4.) The Roman Catholics. After Vasco de Gama in 1498 had discovered the passage by the Cape of Good Hope, the Portuguese, in about half a century, obtained possession of the greater part of the ports in Persia and India, and established a chain of factories from the Cape of Good Hope to the river of Canton. To these conquests they added most of the islands of the Malayan Archipelago. Wherever they came they brought, not their commerce alone, but their religion too. That vast extent of sea-coast, reaching more than four thou

* Mem. p. 18-20.

sand leagues, as well as the islands, is still peopled by their descendants, and through the whole line their language prevails, and their religion is known. There are also numerous Romish Missions established throughout Asia. Among the first to enter on these itinerant labors was the celebrated Francis Xavier, styled "the Apostle of the Indians." He was one of those, who, in connexion with Ignatius Loyola, in the year 1540, founded the Society of Jesuits. He sailed from Lisbon in 1541, and the next year arrived at Goa. For ten succeeding years he labored incessantly to extend the Romish Church, wandering from place to place in the deepest poverty, possessing only a mat on which he sometimes lay, and a small table covered with his writings, and a few books. He preached at Goa, in different parts of the South of India, Malacca, the Molucca islands, and Japan. From Japan he went to China, but was taken sick on his voyage, and died in sight of the Empire in 1552, in the fortysixth year of his age. Others say he died on the sea-shore in a wretched cabin that could not protect him from the severity of a piercing wind. His successors penetrated into China. During the last century the Romish Missionaries in the East have shown little zeal for the conversion of the heathen; and they are now generally stationary at the numerous seats of their missions. The mission at Nepaul is superintended by a Prefect.

Besides these Missions, and besides the Syro-Roman Christians on the coast of Malabar,