hich extended to Europe. The
missionaries made this, like most pilgrim resorts, a centre of
preaching and Bible circulation, and doubtless it was from Thompson,
Carey's Missionary at Delhi, that this copy of the Pushtoo Bible was
received. It was begun by Dr. Leyden, and continued for seven years by
the same Afghan maulavee under Carey, in the Arabic character. The
Punjabi Bible, nearly complete, issued first in 1815, had become so
popular by 1820 as to lead Carey to report of the Sikhs that no one of
the nations of India had discovered a stronger desire for the
Scriptures than this hardy race. At Amritsar and Lahore "the book of
Jesus is spoken of, is read, and has caused a considerable stir in the
minds of the people." A Thug, asked how he could have committed so
many murders, pointed to it and said, "If I had had this book I could
not have done it." A fakeer, forty miles from Lodiana, read the book,
founded the community of worshippers of the Sachi Pite Isa, and
suffered much persecution in a native State.

When Felix Carey returned to Serampore in 1812 to print his Burmese
version of the Gospel of Matthew and his Burmese grammar, his father
determined to send the press at which they were completed to Rangoon.
The three missionaries despatched with it a letter to the king of Ava,
commending to his care "their beloved brethren, who from love to his
majesty's subjects had voluntarily gone to place themselves under his
protection, while they translated the Bible, the Book of Heaven, which
was received and revered" by all the countries of Europe and America as
"the source whence all the knowledge of virtue and religion was drawn."
The king at once ordered from Serampore a printing-press, like that at
Rangoon, for his own palace at Ava, with workmen to use it. In this
Carey saw the beginning of a mission in the Burman capital, but God had
other designs which the sons and daughters of America, following Judson
first of all, are still splendidly developing, from Rangoon to
Kareng-nee, Siam, and China. The ship containing the press sank in the
Rangoon river, and the first Burmese war soon followed.

Three months after the complete and magnificent plan of translating the
Bible into all the languages of the far East, which the assistance of
his two colleagues and the college of Fort William led Carey to form,
had been laid before Fuller in Northamptonshire, the British and
Foreign Bible Society was founded in London.