Consisting of the following kinds :-English, 8,729; German, 451; Welsh, 1,440; French, 435; Italian, 70. Unbound Bibles, on hand, at the close of the year. 66 Testaments " 66 12.237 11,597 23,834 Of the above number 3,807 are German, and 1,250 are French. LIFE MEMBERS AND DIRECTORS. The last year added to our lists are as follows: Three hundred and sixty-one Life-Members, and twelve Directors for Life. Adding to the value of quotas of plain books delivered to them at the depository, those delivered from other places, makes the total amount delivered to Life Members and Life Directors, $1,243.06. The wisdom of continuing such distribution, is more fully considered in the separate Report, which has been adopted at the Meeting last month, in NewYork. (See page 2 of this Paper.) FOREIGN OPERATIONS. These, as usual have been the leading objects of interest for the past year. It has awakened devout gratitude, not only here, but widely in foreign lands, and on the other side of the globe, that we have been enabled to meet the specific requirements made on our treasury, for the supply of the more pressing wants in each of the fields heretofore occupied by us. The only exception to this, is in the coöperation extended to our English Baptist brethren in India, in former years, but which for the last two, has been intermitted. Whether it may be found practicable to recommence this formerly favorite branch of our operations, will depend on the ability of the Society and the necessities of our English brethren. APPROPRIATIONS OF THE YEAR. To the American Baptist Missionary Union: For printing and distributiug Scriptures in Burman. Total, to Missionary Union,----- To Rev. J. G. Oncken, for printing and distributing Scriptures in Germany & Denmark, $2,500 00 1,500 00 2,500 00 1,250 00 750 00 1,500 00 1,000 00 500 00 -$11,500 00 7,699 22 To Rev. Amos Sutton, D.D., for printing and distributing Scriptures in Orissa.. The Recapitulation, under another form, will show the following result: It must be obvious on the slightest reflection that much of this work, in heathen lands especially, has been of a preliminary character: necessarily slow, toilsome and requiring the utmost carefulness on the part of translators, and revisors, and printers of first editions of Scriptures in languages where a printed literature did not before exist. Some considerations of this kind were embraced in the commemorative discourse delivered at our last anniversary on the life and labors of Rev. Dr. Judson as a translator of the Scriptures, and which has since been published by the direction of the Board. A still fuller and more minute development of this interesting view has just been received from the Rev. Francis Mason, the indefatigable and successful translator of the entire Bible into the language of the Karens, that most interesting people, who more than any others reached by our evangelizing labors, seem to have been prepared of the Lord, for the reception of His word. We prefer giving this account entire, assured that many of the friends and supporters of this Society, which for so many years has sustained the beloved brother, will rejoice in the opportunity of tracing the successive steps of this great and benign achievement, which has resulted in giving to a nation the oracies of GOD. SEA COAST, NEAR TAVOY, Jan. 5, 1852. MY DEAR BROTHER:-The Report of the American and Foreign Bible Society for 1851, in alluding to the completion of the translation of the Old Testament in Karen, indicates that the Secretary desires to be furnished with details; and since no one has been employed in the work but myself, it devolves upon me to furnish them. As in the providence of God, it fell to my lot to be the first to preach to the Karens in their own language, I was early induced, in connection with my previous tastes and studies, to contemplate the work of giving them the Bible in their own tongue. The task, however, has been a much more difficult one than can well be conceived. No complete version, it is believed, has heretofore been made in any language, from the Indus to the Hoangho, in which there was not a settled literature, to which to appeal for the usage of language. The Burmese and Siamese have had the Pali, on which to draw for words not in the vernacular; and to the languages of Western India, the Sanscrit, and the Arabic furnish terms as readily as Latin and Greek to the European tongues. But in Karen we have had to create our own terms, seck out for ourselves the grammatical principles of the language, form our own literature, and write for a people in isolated clans, hundreds of miles from one another, and each with some cherished peculiarity of dialect, as characteristic as the Ephraimites' Shibboleth, or the Somerset man's Zummerset, the London v, the Yorktown h, and the Northumberland z. To dispose of these difficulties in a skilful manner, assuredly affords scope for the exercise of the keenest intellect, and opportunities for the use of the most varied knowledge; and yet it is said, that many of our educated young men in America reject the claims of the heathen, because they will be able no more to cultivate their minds. "You will no longer improve," said a sorrowing brother minister to his fellow-student, who was about to embark on a foreign mission. "You will have no more leisure to cultivate the intellect, and should you live twenty years, you will be no better preacher than you now are." It is true that a missionary has little opportunity for the culture of English literature and oratory. He has no English sermons to write during the week, no refined intellectual audiences to address on the Sabbath. Here it is admitted there is something to sacrifice for the heathen. But while there is a loss here, there are gains in another direction, though like "rivers unknown to song," they may not yet have attained that place in the literary world which some young men desire. While the man of letters in America or Europe is studying the Ancient Classics in the streams of Greece and Rome, the missionary in India is seated at the fountain head, and amid the Buddhist and Braminical authors, gazes at the very sources from which Pythagoras derived his philosophy, and Plato his ethics. The doctrine of equivalents is becoming understood. German and French, or Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, are now a legal tender of equal value in the Republic of Letters, with Greek and Latin-and when a missionary, as many have done, conquers two or three foreign tongues, so as to read, preach, or write books in them, he has acquired something, which, on the principle of substituting one kind of knowledge as an equivalent for another, may at least mitigate the regret of the literary aspirant for the loss he sustains in not being able to preach eloquent English discourses, or write elegant classical essays. My first study in coming to the East was the Burman, and as it was my intention to acquire the language thoroughly, I commenced at once reading the Buddhist books, as the tracts and translations, being written by foreigners, were less adapted to give an idiomatic knowledge of the language. The Buddhist books were found to be full of Pali words and sentences, which induced me to take up the study of Pali as necessary to an extensive knowledge of Burman. Indeed, every term in mathematics, and mental, moral and natural philosophy, is, it is believed, without exception, pure Pali words. The Pali, I found to be a dialect of Sanscrit. which led me to give some attention to that language, the more especially, as there was neither dictionary nor grammar in Pali,* and it was found, on trial, that Wilson's dictionary defined the corresponding word in most instances, precisely as it was used in the Pali. While Burman was the first study, Karen constantly engaged a portion of my attention, but as there were no books in the language, I had to study it altogether by the ear when among the people. In all my excursions, I carried a slip of paper and pencil in one pocket, and a piece of the Hebrew Bible in another, and whenever I heard a Karen, as we walked together, or as we sat in the houses where we went up to preach the gospel, utter an expression or word that was new to me, I immediately put it down in writing, the more especially, if it was one that I could use in the translation. Sometimes the people have been aroused at midnight to get me a light, that some fragment of poetry or unusual phrase that I heard used by a casual visiter lying near me, inight be entered on my note book. In this way was obtained all the language in common use, but this only forms a small portion of a language; so I induced those who were able to write their own language most correctly, to set down all the Karen traditions, myths and romances, both in prose and poetry, with which they were acquainted. Thus a large mass of native writings was collected, that became a useful body of literature, to which to refer for the use of language; and it is the more reliable, as it is the production of many different authors, and written as related by many different individuals. Nearly the whole has since been published in the Karen Thesaurus, which, with Mr. Wade's dictionary and my grammar in Sgau and Pwo, sets new missionaries on the shoulders of their predecessors, and enables them to take in at a glance, a much more extended horizon. As familiarity was attained in the Karen, it was easily seen that the language had no resemblance to the Burman or Pali, but as languages are usually in families, and rarely isolated, it occurred to me that the Karen language might be a branch of some one of the others spoken around me, and I therefore determined *There is, in most of the Kyoung libraries, a vocabulary of nouns, adjectives, and participles arranged in subjects, the terms of each science or subject being all brought together. A copy of this was arranged alphabetically by Dr. Judson, or under his supervision, by natives, with the original Burman definition, and this has sometimes been called a dictionary. I have, also, a vocabulary taken from an original copy, found in a Kyoung at Tavoy, which contains half as many more words than the copy used by Dr. Judson. This I retain in the Cyclopedia form, and have added an alphabetical index, by which arrangement I have all the synonymous together, and a useful classification of them, with all the advantages of a dictionary. Still, these are mere native vocabularies, with loose Burman definitions, containing a mere fragment of the language, the words all in an inflected state, and not a single verb in the whole. The largest does not contain eight thousand words, while the Sanscrit, of which Pali is a dialect, has sixty thousand in Wilson's dictionary alone. There is also a ponderous native grammar in Pali, written, it is said, by one of Guadama's own disciples, but one must have made considerable progress in the language, before he can comprehend it. From this I have written a brief grammar in Pali and English, that facilitates the way to the study of the language for those that come after me. to examine them all sufficiently to ascertain the truth on this point. I first took up Talaing, with the aid of a Talaing man obtained from one of the Tavoy villages, and proceeded far enough to see, that while the Karens had borrowed numerous Talaing words from their living among the nation, yet the two languages had no affinity beyond their common syllabic character. A Siamese grammar and vocabulary were next read, with similar results. The question then arose, was it a dialect of the Chinese. I found the Chinamen at Tavoy said shyeu for hand, and the Karens su, for eye they said moh, and the Karens mai; with a few other similar resemblances. To satisfy myself, I wrote to a missionary in China, before we had any missionaries there, for books, and in due time obtained Marshman's Grammar, Premare's Notes and a vocabulary by Dr. Morrison; but it required little research to find that Karen was not Chinese; although there are many roots of common origin, and the inflections of the languages are nearly the same. Subsequently Toungthoos were met with at different times, and from them I obtained a vocabulary of words, which showed considerable affinity to Pwo Karen. The only tongue that remained to be examined was the Malay, and after procuring Marsden's Dictionary and Grammar, I found that, still more than the other languages, differing widely from the Karen; but though the Malay gave no light on Karen, yet when the Selungs were brought forward, it was apparent, at first sight, that half or three-fourths of the vocabularies, gathered from among them, were composed of Malay roots. But the translator cannot or ought not to stop at philological studies. The Bible is studded with terms in mineralogy, botany and zoology, and with a few difficult ones in astronomy, the vernacular names of which can only be acquired by seeking for the things themselves, and determining them by a patient analysis, and comparison with their scientific descriptions. The Bible Society requires their translators to render every word possible; but in the case of these terms it is not always an easy task. Take for instance, mazzaroth, or ni mazzaloth, in the singular, mazzal. In Job 38: 32, the English translators have transferred the word, which Barnes says is "the only safe way," but in II. Kings, 23: 5, they have rendered it planets in the text, and put signs of the zodiac in the margin. Luther has morgensternd the morning star in Job, and planets in Kings, while De Wette renders it in both places by thierkreis, the zodiac. Gescinus agrees with De Wette, and Kitto says it is a word which signifies dwellings, stations in which the sun tarries in his apparent course through the heavens. Now, if the translator is bound to express in his version, the exact sense of the original, as he himself understands it, then I must render this word in a signification which I have never seen given to it, by either translator or commentator. There is no reason to believe that the zodiacal division of the heavens was known to the Shemitic nations in the time of Job. The names of the signs are in Arabic, the same as in Greek and Sanscrit, while the zodiac is called boruj; which bears no resemblance to the Hebrew word, as it might be anticipated to do, if they were synonymous. But it is well known to all who have studied the astronomy of the Arabs, that they anciently divided the heavens into twenty-eight lunar mansions. I have before me sonie extracts in the original Arabic, from a work written by Ibn Qotatbah, nearly a thousand years ago, and these mansions are there called, in the singular, manzila; but other authors write Jo manzil. This is manifestly the same -9 بوج word as the Hebrew, with the slight change of the dialect. "The lunar mansions were almanac and dial of the illiterate children of the desert." For these and other reasons that cannot be here mentioned, it appears plain to me, that the word denotes lunar mansions; and the next question is, for the Karen term to use in the translation. The Karens have no such division of the heavens of their own, but they are acquainted with a name for it through the Burmese, who have adopted it from the Hindoos through the Pali; and this is the word I use in the Karen version. This single illustration may serve to show the research neces ary for any one who would translate the Scriptures, discriminately, into the Karen tongue. Finally, to bring this long letter to a close, I have been studying Karen for twenty-one successive years, and have been in the constant habit of reading the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures for a quarter of a century. I have also availed myself of the aid of biblical criticism from America, England and Germany, and have left no science or language wholly unstudied, that could aid in furnishing the Karen nation with a correct translation of the entire Bible; and now that the work is done, I am so convinced of its defects, that I should shrink from the publication, did I not know that Christ and his Apostles quoted from a version of the Old Testament, at least as imperfect as the Karen, and that truth, shining only through imperfect versions, has been successful in bringing the world down to the borders of the millenium. Yours affectionately, F. MASON. From the Asiatic Missions of the Union, the following brief results of the year have been gleaned : MAULMAIN. The issue of Scriptures for distribution from the depository at Maulmain has been greater during the past than in former years, the demand for books having tasked at times the capacity of supply. By the occupancy of Rangoon as a Missionary Station now interrupted, temporarily, it is hoped, by war, a demand was developed among the Karen churches in Burmah proper, whose distance from the stations in the British dominions had made communication with them comparatively infrequent. Men came from remote parts of the country, through many hardships and dangers, to procure books. The total reported issues of entire Scriptures amounted to 2,603 copies, distributed as follows: To Maulmain missions, 884; Tavoy, 323; Mergui, 30; Akyab, 2; Kyouk Phyoo, 31; Sandoway, 1,333. Of parts of Scriptures, 7,438 copies were issued, viz: To Maulmain missions, 4,379; Tavoy, 1,904; Mergui, 50; Akyab, 80; Kyouk Phyoo, 823; Sandoway, 75. The issues to Rangoon are not stated, having been chiefly made after the close of the mission year embraced in the Report. Besides the copies taken with them by Messrs. Kincaid and Dawson, two boxes of books were forwarded in October, and five boxes additional in November, the contents of which appertain to the present mission year to be embraced in the next Report. TAVOY. Mr. Mason has been carrying forward the revision of the Karen Scriptures, the past year as rapidly as the feeble state of his health admitted. The first form of the Old Testament in Sgau, went to press June 1, in an edition of 2,000 copies. 500 copies of the Pentateuch, and perhaps of some other parts of Scripture, will be printed for separate circulation. At the last report, Genesis and most of Exodus had been printed, and as Mr. Mason's health appeared to have improved, there is hope that the work will go forward with increased rapidity. CHINA HONGKONG. During the past year, an edition of 3,000 copies of Genesis, with explanatory notes has been printed, and Exodus similarly prepared is in press. A similar edition of the Acts of the Apostles is preparing. The New Testament, which |