NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Reverend William Carey
1761 August 17, Monday: William Carey was born in Purey, Northampton, England. His father and grandfather were clerks of the Episcopal Church. Although during an orthodox boyhood he would be taught to regard dissenters with contempt, as an adult he would become one of these dissenters, a Baptist. The following advertisement appeared in the Boston Gazette, offering that any male slave who was proving himself to be a management problem, which is to say, less than fully compliant with his master s wishes, might be sold South to a venue in which, basically, he would be worked to death in the fields as part of a crew under the direction of slavedrivers with whips: To be sold, a parcel of likely young negroes, imported from Africa, cheap for cash. Inquire of John Avery. Also, if any person have any negro men, strong and hearty, though not of the best moral character, which are proper subjects for transportation, they may have an exchange for small negroes. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT The Semapore Trio Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
1783 October 5, Sunday: At the age of 22, William Carey was baptized in Nen River just above Dr. Doddridge s church in Northhampton (England), by Dr. Ryland. For more than three years he would walking six miles each way in order to preach to a small congregation in Boston (England). LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? NO, THAT S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN S STORIES. LIFE ISN T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Reverend William Carey
1787 August 1, Wednesday: The Reverend William Carey was ordained pastor of the church of Moulton. The ordination sermon was preached by the Reverend Andrew Fuller. The new reverend s annual income at Moulton was to be a mere $75. 00 despite having a wife and two kiddies to support. A gifted linguist, it would take this reverend but seven years to learn Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Dutch. (Eventually he would author a Sanskrit grammar of more than 1,000 quarto pages, a Mahratta grammar, a Punjabi grammar, a Telinga grammar, a Sanskrit dictionary (the manuscript of which unfortunately was burned before it could be printed), a Mahratta dictionary, a Bengali dictionary, and a Bhotanta dictionary. The versions of the Sacred Scriptures, in the preparations of which he took an active and laborious part, include the Sanskrit, Hindu, Brijbbhassa, Mahratta, Bengali, Oriya, Telinga, Karnata, Maldivian, Guarjattee, Bulooshe, Pushtoo, Punjabi, Kashmeer, Assam, Burman, Pali, or Magudha, Tamul, Cingalese, Armenian, Malay, Hindostani, and Persian. In six of these tongues the whole Scriptures have been translated and circulated; the New Testament has appeared in 23 languages, besides various dialects in which smaller portions of the sacred text have been printed. In thirty years Mr. Carey and his brethren rendered the Word of God accessible to one-third of the world. ) THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Reverend William Carey
1789 The Reverend William Carey became pastor of the church in Leicester, and there he continued to shape his plans for the salvation of the heathen. It would be from this church that he would venture to bring the Word of God to an India that already had so very many words of so very many gods. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Reverend William Carey
1792 The report of the voyages of Captain James Cook inspired the Baptist Reverend William Carey to go and preach the gospel to the heathen. He issued a pamphlet entitled AN INQUIRY INTO THE OBLIGATION OF CHRISTIANS TO USE MEANS FOR THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN (Carey Kingsgate Press). If he had his druthers he would wouldn t we all? go convert the heathens of Tahiti. May 30, Wednesday: At the meeting of his Association, which was held at Nottingham, the Reverend William Carey preached on ISAIAH 54: 2,3, announcing the two memorable divisions of his disclosure: Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God. October 2, Tuesday: At Kettering, the church of Andrew Fuller, the Baptist Missionary Society was organized. The society was formally instituted in the little parlor of the house of the widow of Deacon Beeby Wallis, a room which eventually would become famous among the self-righteous as the birthplace of all the great Protestant missionary societies that had sprung into existence. WHAT I M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF The Semapore Trio Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
1793 A surgeon, Dr. Thomas, had preached his Baptist faith occasionally to the Indians, and returned to England to solicit other religious Englishmen to join him on the subcontinent. He and the Reverend William Carey were appointed missionaries by the new Baptist Missionary Society and took passage aboard the Earl of Oxford to sail back to India, but when they went on board the Reverend Carey had no license from the British East India Company to visit India, and so both the missionaries were put ashore. June 13, Thursday: The Reverend William Carey and Dr. John Thomas, of the Baptist Missionary Society, took passage aboard a Danish East Indiaman, the Kron Princessa Maria. The voyage would be an uneventful one, and the missionaries would reach their destination in good health. For a few years the Reverend Carey would take charge of an indigo-factory, at a salary of 240 per annum, and meanwhile he would labor quietly as a unavowed missionary. Everything would be just fine until he visited Calcutta and was detected by the British East India Company. The Reverend Carey determined to perform his missionary labors at Serampore, a Danish settlement on the river Hoogly, 15 miles from Calcutta. Colonel Bie, the representative of the Danish sovereign at Serampore, would protect him for years from the governors of British India. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT The Semapore Trio Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
1800 November 25, Tuesday: Krishna Pal, a 36-year-old Indian carpenter, suffered a dislocated arm, and was treated by Dr. John Thomas, the first missionary to India from the Baptist Missionary Society. Dr. Thomas, along with the Reverend Joshua Marshman, spoke with this Indian worker about religion. Soon Krishna Pal embraced the Christian faith. The Belisarius under Captain Samuel Skerry, Junior sailed from Salem harbor toward the distant destination of the Spice Islands. PEPPER December 28, Sunday: Krishna Pal, the 1st Hindu convert to Christianity, was baptized in the Ganges River by the Reverend William Carey. INDIA BAPTISTS (Krishna Pal would preach the Gospel for more than two decades, authoring several Christian hymns.) DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. The Semapore Trio Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
1801 India was being governed by the British East India Company. Fundamentally secular, the Company was prepared to display a conventional respect for local gods and was antagonistic toward Christian missionaries. In this year, for instance, a deputation from the Company joined a procession to the Kalee ghaut and presented 5,000 rupees to the idol for the success which had attended British arms. Only their own vessels could trade at the ports of the subcontinent. No white men could visit their permission, nor remain longer than they were ready to allow. The needs of the missionaries were not in control, the need of the Company was in control. However, when Lord Wellesley founded the College of Fort Williams in Calcutta in order to teach the language of Bengal to young Englishmen in the civil service of the Company in India, it was discovered that one of the Baptist missionaries, the Reverend William Carey, was the best man in the East or in Great Britain to teach the language, and he was made a professor there. The Supreme Court judges in Bengal had sponsored a 2d compilation of the Hindu legal code, this time of the material known as the Vivadadhangarnava or ocean of solution to disputes. Sir William Jones had appointed Jagannath Tarkapanchanan to compile the materials, and he himself had begun the work of translating the materials into English. After Jones s death the translation had been completed by Henry Thomas Colebrooke, and the materials were published in this year under the title A DIGEST OF HINDOO LAWS.
1820 Early in the year: Convinced by a study of THE BIBLE in Greek and Hebrew that the Golden Rule, although an ingredient in every system of religion, 1 was best to be inculcated through the system known as Christianity, and yet aware that the two translations of the Gospels into Bengali, those of the Reverend William Carey and Mr. Ellerton, abounded in the most flagrant violations of native idiom, Rajah Rammohan Roy published at his own expense THE PRECEPTS OF JESUS A SUFFICIENT GUIDE TO PEACE AND HAPPINESS, a selection from the Gospels and was promptly and vehemently attacked by the Trinitarian missionary Dr. Joshua Marshman in Serampore, India. 1. In attributing the Golden Rule to Hinduism, the Rajah relied upon the DHAMMAPADA, which contains All fear punishment, all love life. Therefore, do not kill, or cause to kill. Do as you would want done. upon the MAHABHARATA, which contains not only Good people do not injure living beings; in joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, one should act toward others as one would have them act toward oneself. but also Whatever one would wish for oneself, that let one plan for another. and upon the BHAGAVAD-GITA, which contains This highest Godhead hath his seat in every being, and liveth though they die; who seeth him, is seeing, and he who everywhere this highest God hath found, will not wound Self with self. In actuality, we may note, the rule as enunciated in Hinduism is broader than the rule as it is found in Christianity, for it contains no implicit speciesist presumption, as it most emphatically does within Christendom, that the scope of its application must be limited to the realm of human creatures alone. It is, instead, as broad as when enunciated by Friend John Woolman: I rejoice, that I feel love unfeigned towards my fellow creatures. Friend John Woolman, to his wife, 24th of 4th Month, 1760
Rajah Rammohan Roy responded with AN APPEAL TO THE CHRISTIAN PUBLIC, IN DEFENSE OF THE PRECEPTS OF CHRIST, a 20-page pamphlet which, again, he published at his own expense.
1821 Early in the year, Mary Moody Emerson was writing Ralph Waldo Emerson letters about a remarkable Hindoo Reformer. In India, Rammohan Roy was publishing at his own expense a book of 150 pages, SECOND APPEAL TO THE CHRISTIAN PUBLIC IN DEFENCE OF THE PRECEPTS OF JESUS, asserting that what was important about Christianity had nothing to do with those Biblical miracles miracles, that is, other than the main miracle, of the love of God as it can be made manifest in the beneficence which we can occasionally summon toward our fellow creatures. One of the Baptist missionaries in Calcutta, a Reverend William Adam who had been discussing religion with Rammohan in an effort to bring him over to the belief of that Doctrine, was beginning to entertain some doubts respecting the Supreme Deity of Jesus Christ and was becoming Unitarian and was starting up what would be known as the Sambad Kaumudi. King Frederick VI of Denmark endowed the college which the Baptist missionaries had founded at Serampore on the river Hoogly in India with the rent of a house worth about $5,000, and sent them in addition a gold medal. At that point a visitor described the Reverend William Carey as short in stature, with white hair, and a
countenance equally bland and benevolent in feature and expression.
1822 In India, Rammohan Roy was starting the Mirat-ul-Akhbar, and starting his Anglo-Hindu School, and publishing BRIEF REMARKS ON ANCIENT FEMALE RIGHTS. Krishna Pal died.
The Initial Indian Convert to Christianity
1827 February 23, Friday: King Frederick VI of Denmark appointed the Reverends William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and William Ward as members of the first Council of Serampore College in India, an educational institution which the monarch incorporated under Danish authority. Continually supporting the cause of education in India, the Reverend Joshua Marshman would accept a position as an official translator in India for the British government and in doing so create bad feelings among his fellow missionaries. In 1852, under this barrage of criticism, he would resign and return to Great Britain, where he would stand for a seat in the Parliament on three different occasions (1857, 1859, and 1861), but would lose all three elections. He would die on July 8, 1877 in London.
1829 December: In India, the council of Lord William Bentinek abolished suttee, the practice of throwing widows alive onto the funeral bonfires of the bodies of their dead husbands. The act was to be published simultaneously in English and Bengali, and needed to be provided an effective and literate translation. The Reverend William Carey received the order from Henry Shakespeare, secretary of the government, on the morning of the Lord s Day, just before going into the pulpit to preach, but since each day of delay in the proclamation of the act would probably cost the lives of two widows, he did not go into the pulpit but instantly commenced his translation, and was able to complete it before the fall of night.
1834 June 9, Monday: In his 73d year, William Carey died in India. Before the Reverend s death, 212,000 copies of the Christian Scriptures had been sent out from Serampore in 40 different languages, representing the tongues of 330,000,000 members of the human family. Dr. Southey would write that These low-born, lowbred mechanics have done more to spread the knowledge of the Scriptures among the heathen than has been accomplished, or even attempted, by all the world beside. Giacomo Costantino Beltrami was nominated to be a member of the Société dell Institut Historique de France (oops, there went his Saturday afternoons). Jonathan Child was elected by Rochester, New York s council as the city s first mayor.
1836 Francis Wayland was the compiler, and author of the introductory essay for, the 1st American edition of the Reverend William Carey s MEMOIR.
1859 James Robert Ballantyne s award-winning CHRISTIANITY CONTRASTED WITH HINDŪ PHILOSOPHY: AN ESSAY, IN FIVE BOOKS, IN SANSKRIT AND ENGLISH: WITH PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS TENDERED TO THE MISSIONARY AMONG THE HINDŪS (London: James Madden, Leadenhall Street). The Reverend John Clark Marshman s THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CAREY, MARSHMAN, AND WARD EMBRACING THE HISTORY OF THE SERAMPORE MISSION (2 vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts). The son John Clark Marshman honored the many accomplishments in India due to the devotion of the missionary Reverends William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and William Ward, who had come to be known as the Serampore trio. CAREY, MARSHMAN, WARD CAREY, MARSHMAN, WARD MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY The Semapore Trio Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this read-only computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace resulting in navigation problems allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. It s all now you see. Yesterday won t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. Remark by character Garin Stevens in William Faulkner s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: September 11, 2014
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot Laura (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary writerly process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world. First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.