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B I B 



printing, versions of the Scriptures into the French, Basque, 

 Breton, Flemish, Spanish, Jewish-Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, 

 Romanese, German, Bohemian, Servian, Wendish, Hun- 

 garian, Polish, Lithuanian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Lap- 

 punese, Icelandic, Samogitian, Esthonian, Lettish, Scla- 

 vonian, Wallachian, Albanian, Russian, Turkish, Turco- 

 Greek, Tartar-Turkish, Modern Greek, Albanian, Calmuc, 

 Burial Mongolian, Manuchod, Modern Armenian, Carshun, 

 Syriac, Georgian, Turco-Armenian, and Armenian lan- 

 guages. In Asia it has promoted the translation and pub- 

 lication of the Holy Scriptures in Persian, Arabic, Singalese, 

 Pali, Hindoostanee, Bengalee, Sanscrit, Teloogoo, Tamul, 

 Malay, Mahratta, Malayalim, Orissa, Seik, Birman, Car- 

 narese, and several other dialects, together with two versions 

 of the whole Scriptures in the Chinese, a language under- 

 stood by perhaps one-fifth of the population of the globe. 

 At Madagascar the New Testament and Psalter has been 

 printed in Malagasse. The inhabitants of the Society and 

 Georgian Islands have also received versions in the Tahitian 

 languages. In Africa the antient church of Abyssinia has 

 been supplied with an edition of the Ethiopic Psalter and 

 the Gospels ; and the Pentateuch, Psalter, and New Testa- 

 ment have been printed in the vulgar dialect of Abyssinia. 

 Egypt has been furnished with the Psalter and the four 

 Gospels in Coptic and Arabic. The inhabitants of a portion 

 of Western Africa have received a part of the Scriptures in 

 the Bulloin dialect ; the aborigines of Northern Africa, a 

 translation of the Gospels and the book of Genesis in the 

 Berber: some of the tribes of Southern Africa the Gospels 

 in the Namacqua dialect, besides versions in the Caffre and 

 Sichuana. At Labrador the New Testament and Psalms 

 have been translated into the Esquimaux language, and 

 the New Testament and the book of Genesis into the lan- 

 guage of Greenland. 



The principal translations of the Scriptures now carrying 

 on under the auspices, and with the aid of this society, are 

 in the languages of Europe, the Breton and Catalonian ; of 

 Asia, the Persian, the Curdish, the Ararat- Armenian, and 

 various dialects of the peninsula of Hindostan ; of the South 

 Sea Islands, the Tahitian, Raratogna, Tonga, and the lan- 

 guage of New Zealand ; of America, the Chippeway, tlm 

 Peruvian, the Aimara, the Mexican, the Misteca, the Ta- 

 rasco, and Esquimaux; and of Africa, the Namacqua, the 

 Caffre, and the Sichuana. 



Translations have been commenced in the following lan- 

 guages or dialects, but of the completion or publication of 

 these there is no immediate prospect : 



Arawack (South American Indian); Ossitinian, and 

 Wotiak, by the Russian Bible Society ; Bugis, Macassar, 

 MaMivian, and Rakheng, by the late Dr. Leyden, aided by 

 the Calcutta Bible Society. 



By the Serampore missionaries. Bhojpooree, Budri- 

 nathee, Bulochee, Bundelkhundee, Huriyana, Joypore, Mu- 

 nipoora Koonkee, Tripoora Koonkee, Kousoulee, Kucha- 

 ree, Kutch, Mithilee, Oodoypore, Sindhoo, and Southern 

 Sindhoo. 



The Russian Bible Society had undertaken the printing 

 of the Scriptures in twenty-seven different languages previ- 

 ous to its suspension ; and before that event took place it 

 had been the means of diffusing, for the first time, 861,105 

 copies of entire Bibles and Testaments, or separate books 

 thereof, amongst the natives of that empire. The Protestant 

 Bible Society of St. Peteisburg is pursuing its course with 

 energy, though on a more contracted scale than its prede- 

 cessor did. During the years 1833-34 it distributed 16,908 

 copies of the Scriptures. 



The Calcutta Auxiliary Society, which has branches at 

 Malacca, Prince of Wales' Island, Benares, and Cawnpore, 

 has put forth the following versions and editions: Cinga- 

 lese New Testament, Armenian Bible, Malay (Roman cha- 

 racter) Bible and Genesis, Malay (Arabic character) Bible 

 and Genesis, Hindoostanee (Nagree character) New Testa- 

 ment and Gospels, Bengalee Gospels and New Testament, 

 Tainul Genesis and New Testament, Hindoostanee Gospels 

 and Acts, New Testament, Pentateuch, and Old Testament ; 

 Teloogoo Testament, Hindoostanee and English Gospel of 

 St. Matthew, Bengalee and English Gospels of St. Matthew 

 and St. John, Acts and Epistles in Bengalee. 



The Colombo Auxiliary Society, in the island of Ceylon, 

 hag printed the Cingalese Testament, Gospels of St. Matthew 

 and St. Mark, Genesis, Psalms, Proverbs, and Bible; and 

 Iuil<>- Portuguese Psalms. 



The bible societies we still prosecuting, with unrelaxed 



activity, their object of circulating copies of the sacred 

 writings among men ' of every nation under heaven.' 



The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge distri- 

 butes about 85,000 Bibles, and 75,000 Testaments annu- 

 ally ; and it appears that at a special general meeting of 

 the society, held February 10, 1834, a separate committee 

 was appointed for the purpose of superintending the publica- 

 tion, and more effectively promoting the circulation of the 

 Scriptures in foreign languages. Besides this, there are 

 other societies through whose means the Scriptures are dis- 

 tributed, but not to so great an extent as the last-mentioned 

 society, which is by many considered as possessing equal 

 claims on public support as the Bible Society, although its 

 operations are not exclusively directed to the circulation of 

 the Scriptures ; and it was in consequence of its alleged in- 

 difference to this object that the British and Foreign Bible 

 Society was called into existence. 



(Owen's History of the Bible Society ; Reports of the 

 British and Foreign Bible Society.) 



BIBLIO'GRAPHY. The term Bi/SXtoypa^ia was used 

 by the Greeks to signify only the writing or transcrip- 

 tion of books ; and a bibliographer (Bt/SXioypd^oc) with 

 them was a writer of books, in the sense of a copyist. 

 The French term Bibliographie was long used to sig- 

 nify only an acquaintance with antient writings and with 

 the art of deciphering them. It is so explained, for in- 

 stance, in the edition of Richelet's Dictionary, published 

 in 1732. The term bibliographe (bibliographer) is not in 

 Richelet. It is given, however, in the Encyclopedie (Paris, 

 1751); but both it and bibliographic are still explained 

 only in the sense that has been just noticed. In the Dic- 

 tiimnaire de Trevoux, published in 1 752, we find it stated 

 that a bibliographer is a decipherer of antient manuscripts, 

 with the addition, that now-a-days the name is given spe- 

 cially to those who are skilled in the knowledge of books 

 and their editions, and who make catalogues of them. 

 Accordingly, in 1763, De Bure published the first volume 

 of his well-known work on the knowledge of rare and sin- 

 gular books, under the title of Bibliographie Instructive. 

 In his preface he employs the term as if the acceptation 

 which it bears in his title-page had become familiar. In 

 subsequent editions of the Encyclopedie (for instance in the 

 fifth volume of the Lausanne edition, printed in 1778) a 

 new article appears on the term bibiiographie, which con- 

 sists merely of a notice of this book of De Bure's. The 

 sense in which the word is used bv De Bure is now, we 

 believe, the only sense in which it is used by French writers, 

 some of whom, however, have of late employed the term 

 bibliologie as its substitute. We doubt whether the Eng- 

 lish term bibliography, which we have borrowed from the 

 French, has ever had any other than this signification since 

 its first appearance in the language ; although in Johnson's 

 Dictionary, published in 1755, a bibliographer is explained 

 as meaning both ' A man skilled in literary history, and in 

 the knowledge of books,' and ' a transcriber.' No authority 

 is quoted for either use of the word. In the later editions 

 of Johnson, the term bibliography is inserted, and stated to 

 mean ' The science of a bibliographer ;' and a bibliographer 

 is defined to be merely ' A man skilled in the knowledge of 

 books.' 



Bibliography may be defined to be the science of books, 

 regarded simply as such. Thus limited, it excludes all 

 consideration either of the literary merits of a work, or of 

 the importance or interest of the subjects which the author 

 treats of, or of the truth or value of his statements, opinions, 

 or speculations. It comprehends the facts of the subject 

 and class of the work, of its authorship and subsequent his- 

 tory, of the number of editions it has passed through, of the 

 printer and publisher of each, and of its date in respect both 

 of time and place, of the form or size (that is, the manner 

 in which the sheets are folded, and also the size of the sheet, 

 for the old folios are often small, such as some old editions of 

 Bale), the quality of the paper, the number of pages, the 

 typographical character, the number and description of the 

 plates, the comparative completeness, correctness, and 

 rarity, and all other external peculiarities or distinctions, of 

 each edition. It is common to include many other things 

 as parts of bibliography, such as a knowledge of the history, 

 and even of the processes, of the arts of printing and book- 

 binding, as well as of the written characters of different 

 ages. But to give such an extension to the science is to 

 leave it without any limits whatever. If the knowledge of 

 the art of. deciphering written charactersi for instance, is to 



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