Translation of the Bible The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. all of the Bible has been translated into 724 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,617 languages, and ...

into

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

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

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

pandit A Pandit ( sa, पण्डित, paṇḍit; hi, पंडित; also spelled Pundit, pronounced ; abbreviated Pt.) is a man with specialised knowledge or a teacher of any field of knowledge whether it is shashtra (Holy Books) or shastra (Wea ...

s in this endeavour. The texts were translated from the original Greek and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

. The

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

was published at the Baptist Missionary Press in

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

in 1808, and the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

in four volumes followed in 1818.

Current status

Though the Calcutta Baptist Missionaries brought out the Bible in the Sanskrit language with great enthusiasm and expectation, their efforts gained little traction, partly because of 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 those translations, and physical copies of the original volumes are today available only in the archives of a few Western libraries. The

Krishnapuram Palace The Krishnapuram Palace is a palace and museum located in Kayamkulam near Alappuzha in Alappuzha district, Kerala in southwestern India. It was built in the 18th century by Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1729–1758 CE), the Travancore kin ...

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

is also reported to be in possession of a copy of the Sanskrit Bible. The

Bible Society of India The Bible Society of India is a Christian body that is authorized to translate, produce, distribute and market the Bible and is a member of the United Bible Societies. The motto of the Society is to translate the word of God into languages, which ...

still publishes a version of the New Testament in Sanskrit. The digitised copies of the Sanskrit Bible (both the New Testament and the four volumes of the Old Testament) are available at archive.org

Online version

With the objective of reviewing the Sanskrit Bible and making it freely available online
SanskritBible.in
The project relies on volunteers to encode the Sanskrit text into

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...

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

{{reflist

History of Christianity in India Translations into Sanskrit