The modern

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

and

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

standards Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object t ...

are highly mutually intelligible in colloquial form, but use different scripts when written, and have lesser mutually intelligibility in literary forms. The history of Bible translations into Hindi and Urdu is closely linked, with the early translators of the

Hindustani language Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in North India and Pakistan as the lingua franca of the region. It is also spoken by the Deccani people, Deccani-speaking community in the Deccan plateau. Hindustani is a pluricentric language w ...

simply producing the same version with different scripts:

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

and

Nastaliq ''Nastaliq'' (; ; ), also Romanization of Persian, romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'' or ''Nastaleeq'' (), is one of the main book hand, calligraphic hands used to write Arabic script and is used for some Indo-Iranian languages, predominantly Persi ...

, as well as

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

. The Hindustani translations of the Bible produced by Benjamin Schultze and Henry Martyn became the basis for subsequent versions published by various scholars.

History

Early Hindustani Bible translations were undertaken by Winfried Ketlar, Benjamin Schultze and Casiano Baligati in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first translation of part of the Bible in Hindi, Genesis, was made in manuscript by

Benjamin Schultze Benjamin Schultze (1689-1760) was a Christian missionary of the Danish-Halle Mission in South India"Schultze, Benjamin" in Gerald H. Anderson (ed), ''Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions'' (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999) p.604 w ...

(1689–1760), a German missionary, who arrived in India to establish an English mission in 1726 and worked on completing

Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (24 June 1683 – 23 February 1719) was a member of the Lutheran clergy and the first Pietist missionary to India. Early life Ziegenbalg was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony, on 24 July 1683 in a devout Christian family. His ...

Bible translations into Tamil The history of Bible translations into the Tamil language commences with the arrival of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg at Tranquebar in 1706.Johann Philipp Fabricius, a German, revised Ziegenbalg's and others work to produce the standard Tamil vers ...

and then Bible translations into Telugu. His translation of parts of Genesis was published in Halle in 1745 along with a grammar of the local Hindi language he had encountered in

Madras Chennai, also known as Madras ( its official name until 1996), is the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. It is located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. According to the 2011 Indian ce ...

Henry Martyn Henry Martyn (18 February 1781 – 16 October 1812) was an Anglican priest and missionary to the peoples of India and Persia. Born in Truro, Cornwall, he was educated at Truro Grammar School and St John's College, Cambridge. A chance e ...

printed the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

in Urdu script in 1814. Both versions produced by Benjamin Schultze and Henry Martyn became the basis for subsequent versions translated by various scholars, including William Bowley, John Chamberlain, John Thompson, William Yachts, Leslie Parson, F.E. Schneider and William Hooper. Additionally, in 1805, Bible translators at the

College of Fort William A college (Latin: ''collegium'') may be a tertiary educational institution (sometimes awarding degrees), part of a collegiate university, an institution offering vocational education, a further education institution, or a secondary school ...

began to translate the Bible in various Indian languages, including Hindustani. Both

and

Old Testament The Old Testament (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 and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

have been translated into

Hindustani Hindustani may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Hindustan (another name of India) * Hindustani language, an Indo-Aryan language, with Hindi and Urdu being its two standard registers * Hindustani Muslims are the Urdu-speaking, Hindust ...

and were published in 1819, 1842 and 1867 respectively from

Kolkata Kolkata, also known as Calcutta ( its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary ...

and

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

script.

Contemporary translations

Hindi

As with

Bible translations into Bengali Nathaniel B. Halhead of the East India Company published a Bengali grammar for British officials in 1776 to aid interaction with the local Bengali population. William Carey of Serampore translated the Bible into the Bengali language and publishe ...

(his own work), and into Oriya,

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India **Marathi people (Uttar Pradesh), the Marathi people in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Mar ...

, and Assamese (with the aid of local scholars) an important early stage of the Hindi Bible rests with the work of William Carey in

Serampore Serampore (also called Serampur, Srirampur, Srirampore, Shreerampur, Shreerampore, Shrirampur or Shrirampore) is a city in Hooghly district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the headquarters of the Srirampore subdivision. It is a part ...

. Though this had to be revised by John Parsons of Monghyr. Carey attracted also the interest of

, later of Persia, to Hindi. Presbyterian Samuel H. Kellogg who taught at the seminary in

Allahabad Prayagraj (, ; ISO 15919, ISO: ), formerly and colloquially known as Allahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi, Varanasi (Benar ...

headed three translators working on translation of the Old Testament into Hindi, including

William Hooper William Hooper (June 28, 1742 October 14, 1790) was an American Founding Father, lawyer, and politician. As a member of the Continental Congress representing North Carolina, Hooper signed the Continental Association and the Declaration of ...

, of the Church Missionary Society, and Joseph Arthur Lambert. Kellogg's ''Hindi Grammar'' (1876, 1893) is still consulted today. However, 18 years after Kellogg's death in 1899, Edwin Greaves of the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed tradition, Reformed in outlook, with ...

, and author of a ''Grammar of Modern Hindi'' (1896, 1908, 1921), in 1917 signalled his concerns about the adequacy of Hindi Bible translations in his ''Report on Protestant Hindi Christian literature''. In collaboration with ''Church centric bible translation'', Free Bibles India has published
Hindi translation online
In 2016, the

New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (NWT, also simply NW) is a Bible translations, translation of the Bible published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society; it is used and di ...

was released by

Jehovah's Witnesses Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian denomination that is an outgrowth of the Bible Student movement founded by Charles Taze Russell in the nineteenth century. The denomination is nontrinitarian, millenarian, and restorationist. Russell co-fou ...

as a complete Bible translation in Hindi."WatchTower publications", Watchtower publications Index (1986-2016) This replaced the earlier partial translation comprising only the New Testament.

Urdu

The New Testament was first translated into the Deccani dialect of Hindi-Urdu by Benjamin Shultze of the Danish Mission in 1745. Robert Cotton Mather printed new editions at

Mirzapur Mirzapur () is a city in Uttar Pradesh, India. It is known for its carpets and brassware industries, and the tradition of kajari and birha music. Straddled by the Kaimur extension of Vindhya mountains, it served as the headquarters of t ...

in 1870. The first complete Bible was first published in northern Urdu in 1843 - translated by

. The Revised Version (URD) ''Kitab-e-Muqaddas'' of 1943 was published by both 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 ...

and th
Pakistan Bible Society
It was translated from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Minor revisions were published in 1955, 1989, 1998 and 2005. In India it is available in the

Nastaʿlīq ''Nastaliq'' (; ; ), also romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'' or ''Nastaleeq'' (), is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write Arabic script and is used for some Indo-Iranian languages, predominantly Classical Persian, Kashmiri, Punjabi a ...

and

Roman Urdu Roman Urdu is the name used for the Urdu language written with the Latin script, also known as Roman script. According to the Urdu scholar Habib R. Sulemani: "Roman Urdu is strongly opposed by the traditional Arabic alphabet, Arabic script lo ...

scripts. In Pakistan it was published in the Nastaʿlīq script only. The Revised Version was adapted for Catholics, with changes in vocabulary and the addition of

deuterocanonical The deuterocanonical books, meaning 'of, pertaining to, or constituting a second Biblical canon, canon', collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be Biblical canon, canonical books of the Old ...

books. It was published by the Pakistan Bible Society for the Catholic Bible Commission Pakistan in 1958 under the title ''Kalam-e-Muqaddas''. The New Testament was revised in 2010. The Old Testament and deutero-canonical books are still in preparation. Using the '' semantic-equivalence'' principles behind the Good News Bible in English, a ''Common Language'' Urdu New Testament was prepared under the Eugene Glassman in the 1970s. However, in the face of much opposition from the Christian community within Pakistan, the project was dropped. It was however published by the Bible Society of India. In 2003-2004 the Easy-to-Read version (ERV-UR) '' Muqaddas Baibal'' was published by the World Bible Translation Center (now Bible League). This was based on the Easy to Read version in English. In 2004 the Bible was made available online, but in PDF or image format only, due to the difficulties of typesetting the Nastaʿlīq script. In 2009 a

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

version was made available, beginning with the New Testament. The complete Bible online in Unicode is also available. The International Bible Society (now known as Biblica) published the New Testament of the New Urdu Bible Version (NUBV) in 2009. This is based on their 1983 revision of New International Version (NIV) in English. It was published in India only, not in Pakistan. In 2011 the Urdu Geo Version was published by Geolink Resources LLC. This is a completely new translation from the original languages. This uses modern, understandable Urdu. It includes more vocabulary that is easily understood by a Muslim readership. The Urdu Contemporary Version (UCV) ''Urdu Hamasar Tarjama'' of the New Testament was published by Biblica in 2015. The Old Testament is still in preparation. In collaboration with Church-Centric Bible Translation, Free Bibles India has published the Indian Revised Version (IRV) in the

script online in 2019. Henry Martyn's translation - with corrections from the King James Version of 1611 was published by the Holy Bible Foundation in 2016. In 2015, the New Testament of the

was released in Urdu (Nastaʿlīq script) by

. A Commentary on the Glorious Gospel - (Volume 1) ''Tafseer-e-Injeel-e-Jaleel (Jild-e-Awal)'' was published in 2019 by the Institute of Eastern Studies and Research. It contains only Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts and Revelation. This was produced in literary Urdu by Islamic scholars. It includes the original Greek text of

Codex Sinaiticus The Codex Sinaiticus (; Shelfmark: London, British Library, Add MS 43725), also called the Sinai Bible, is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament, including the deuterocanonica ...

in the older uncial script, an Urdu word-for-word interlinear translation and an idiomatic translation. There are also some notes and commentary. The word Commentary in its title relates to Muslim theology which maintains that only the text in the original language can be given the name of the book (e.g. Torah), any "translation" is in fact a commentary.

Comparison

References

{{reflist

External links

Hindi Versions

Hindi Bible of 1834 (Vol 2: 1 Chronicles - Malachi)
by William Bowley/Calcutta Auxiliary Bible Society: In Public Domain
The Holy Bible in the Hindi Language
North India Bible Society, Allahabad : In Public Domain
Hindi Bible of 1896
North India Auxiliary Bible Society : In Public Domain
Hindi Audio Bible

Urdu Versions

Benjamin Shultze's translation
Mirzapur reprint of 1870.
Urdu Geo Version
: Copyright 2010 Geolink Resource Consultants, LLC. Published by Good Word Communication Services Pvt. Ltd., **Persian scrip
pdf

Audio Narration of Urdu Bible

History of Christianity in Pakistan Urdu Translations into Hindi Translations into Urdu