MARSHMAN, JOSHUA, colleague of Carey and Ward, born in 1768 at Westbury Leigh, the son of a weaver and Baptist minister. He arrived in India in 1799. Johu Clark Marsh man, his eldest son, was born August 1794, accompanied his father to Serampur in 1800, and from 1812, for nearly 20 years, living like his colleagues on £200 a year, conducted an enormous correspondence, and betook himself to secular work, though never abandoning his projects for. the evangelization of Bengal. He started a paper mill, founded the first news paper in Bengali, the Sumachar Durpun ; estab lished the first English weekly, the Friend of India, which in his hands speedily became a power ; published series of law books, one of which, the Guide to the Civil Law, was for years the civil code of India ; and started a Christian colony on a large tract of land purchased in the Sunderbans. All his undertakings except the last succeeded, and the profits and influence acquired through all were devoted in great measure to his favourite idea, that education must in India precede Christianity. While still a
struggling business man, he expended £30,000 on building and maintaining a college for the higher education of natives, a college still worked with the greatest success. KnoWing Bengali as only skilled native pandits know it, and law like a trained lawyer, he was asked by Government to become Official Translator. The salary was £1000 a year, and for ten years he paid away the whole salary every month in furthering the cause of education, and this in silence so complete that his own family probably only after his death learned the fact for the first time. He wrote the first, and for years the only, History of Bengal, and published a History of India after his return to England in 1852.