A rare Sinhalese Bible from the celebrated Wesleyan Mission Press.
The Sinhala are the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka. Printing the first sections of Bible in Sinhalese began in 1739, yet the first complete Bible in Sinhalese didn't appear until 1817.
"Of the missionary societies that operated printing in Sri Lanka, the Wesleyan Methodist Mission occupied a singularly important place in the printing and publishing trade in its formative years" (Kularatne, 213). Run by the missionaries Dr Thomas Coke, William Martin Harvard and others, the press was established in Colombo by November, 1815. The (somewhat aggressive) agenda of the press was "first, to propagate Christianity and proselytize while attacking Buddhism; secondly, to wrest the vernacular education from the Buddhist monks by producing books in Sinhalese for the vernacular schools" (ibid, 237).
The impact was felt immediately, a threatened government repeatedly tried to buy the press for fear of what might be printed there. Furthermore, "[i]t was claimed that the printing done at the missionary press was far superior to any printing previously executed in the Island and hence there had been a demand from the inhabitants to get their printing work done at the Wesleyan Press" (ibid, 214). In addition to their own works, the press fulfilled orders from the Religious Treatise Society and the Auxiliary Bible Society. It also printed works in Tamil, English, and Portuguese.
This is an excellent example from the press.
Unlocated in OCLC and auction records.
Kularatne, E.D.T., "The Wesleyan Methodist Mission in the Printing and Publishing Industry in the 19th Century Ceylon" in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, New Series, Vol. 42 (1997), pp.213-242.
