15/3/2019 Bible translations into Sanskrit - Wikipedia

Bible translations into Sanskrit

Bible in Sanskrit language is among the first wave of Bible translations into Indian languages.

Contents
History
Current status
Online version
References

History
Translation work of the Bible into Sanskrit was undertaken by William Carey soon after his arrival in India as a
missionary. He had the conviction that a Sanskrit Bible would be an ideal medium to communicate with the intellectual
mass of India. He also believed that a Sanskrit Bible would serve as a basis for translating the Bible into other Indian
vernacular languages. He was greatly aided by native Sanskrit pandits in this endeavour. The texts were translated from
the original Greek and Hebrew.

The New Testament was published at the Baptist Missionary Press in Calcutta in 1808, and the Old Testament in four
volumes followed in 1818.

Translation John (यीहनः) 3:16

ई वर इ थं जगददयत यत ् वम वतीयं तनयं ाददात ् ततो यः कि चत ् ति मन ् व व स य त

नत
ू नध म नयमः
सोऽ वना यः सन ् अन तायःु ा य त।[1]

Current status
Though the Calcutta Baptist Missionaries brought out the Bible in the Sanskrit language with great enthusiasm and
expectation, their efforts didn’t gain much traction, partly due to the influx of Bible translations in the vernacular
languages also issuing from the presses. Even though there were some revisions to the text, the Sanskrit Bible remains as a
purely academic endeavour and is no longer in active circulation. There were hardly any major revisions to these
translations and physical copies of the original volumes are today only available in the archives of a few Western libraries.
The Krishnapuram Palace in Kerala is also reported to be in possession of a copy of the Sanskrit Bible.

The Bible Society of India still publishes a version of the New Testament in Sanskrit. The digitized copies of the Sanskrit
Bible (both the New Testament and the four volumes of the Old Testament) are available at archive.org[2][3][4][5][6][7]

Online version
With the objective of reviewing the Sanskrit Bible and making it freely available online, a wiki project SanskritBible.in (htt
p://sanskritbible.in/) is available on the internet.

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15/3/2019 Bible translations into Sanskrit - Wikipedia

The project relies on volunteers to encode the Sanskrit text into Devanagari script based on the digitized copies of the
Sanskrit Bible published by The Calcutta Baptist Missionaries. The site has also stated the revision of the Sanskrit Bible
texts as one of its objectives. The transcription of the New Testament is currently being undertaken.

References
1. http://sanskritbible.in/readmode.html
2. https://archive.org/details/NewTestamentOfBibleInSanskrit
3. https://archive.org/details/dharmmapustakasy00brit
4. https://archive.org/details/holybibleinsansc00gill
5. https://archive.org/details/holybibleinsansc02weng
6. https://archive.org/details/holybibleinsansc03weng
7. https://archive.org/details/holybibleinsansc04weng

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This page was last edited on 14 January 2018, at 01:18 (UTC).

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