East India Company chaplaincy (with CMS ties)
Henry Martyn traded a glittering Cambridge future for a chaplain's post in India and a translator's desk. Arriving in 1806, he gave his short, intense life to putting the New Testament and the Prayer Book into Hindustani, and then carried the work onward toward Persian. Worn out, he died in 1812 at thirty-one — a scholar who spent the sharpest mind of his generation on getting Scripture into the languages people actually spoke.
He burned through his few years like a candle lit at both ends for a single task — to hand whole peoples the Book in words they already knew.
Roles
Regions
What they did
- A brilliant Cambridge scholar — Senior Wrangler and a Fellow of St John's — who sailed as an East India Company chaplain, reaching Calcutta in 1806
- Translated the New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer into Hindustani and worked on a Persian New Testament
- Died young in 1812 after carrying his translation work into Persia
Sources: martyn-memoir-sargent p.9 · neill-history-1707-1858 p.279