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Benjamin Bailey (Dewsbury, November 1791 - 3 April 1871 in Sheinton, Shropshire, England) was a British Church of England missionary in Kerala for 34 years. He was ordained 1815 and moved to Kerala in 1816 where he founded a mission station in Kottayam, and in 1821 established a printing press. He translated the Bible into Malayalam and 1846 published the first English-Malayalam dictionary. He finally left Travancore in 1850.〔George Milne Rae ''The Syrian Church in India'' 1892 p388 "Benjamin Bailey went on furlough in 1831, returned 1834, and finally left Travancore in 1850. He had still twenty years of work in him. He became a rural dean, and the rector of a quiet village in Shropshire."〕 ==Life== Benjamin Bailey was a remarkable man in the cultural history of Kerala, India. He belonged to Dewsbury, Yorkshire, England, where he was born in November 1791, son of Joseph Bailey and his wife Martha. 1812, two years under Rev. T. Scott for missionary training; one year under J. Buckworth, Vicar of Dewsbury. He was ordained Deacon on 6 August and Priest on 17 December 1815, by the Archbishop of York (to the Curacy of Harewood, Yorkshire). In 1816, he married Elizabeth Ella and, on 4 May that year, went to Kottayam, Kerala, India. (Kottayam was then in the Princely state of Travancore and it was under the rule of the Rajah of Travancore. The place- name ‘Kottayam’ was then spelt as ‘Cotym’ and ‘Cottayam’.) The first assignment given to Benjamin Bailey on his arrival in Kottayam was that of Superintendent (Principal) of the ‘Kottayam College’ which was established and run by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) for the education of the Syrian Christians and the general public of Travancore under the package of the ‘Mission of Help’. During his tenure as Principal from 1817 to 1819 Bailey laid the foundation for modern education modeled on western education. For this purpose he formulated curricula and syllabi. He started to teach English language also in the College. Thus Bailey became the founder of English education in Kerala. Benjamin Bailey was the progenitor of printing and book publishing in Malayalam, the native language (mother-tongue) of Kerala. It was he who established the first printing press (the Kottayam CMS press) and started printing Malayalam in Kerala. He was the first lexicographer in the language. Besides this, he was a well versed author and translator. Benjamin Bailey was not only an ‘architect of ‘letters’ but also an original architect in Gothic style. In 1839-42, he built the beautiful Anglican church in Kottayam-the Christ Church- which Bishop Wilson called “the glory of Travancore”. The church is now the Cathedral church of the CSI Madhya Kerala Diocese. On 14 May 1831 Benjamin Bailey went to England on furlough and returned to India on 15 July 1834. On 13 March 1850 he departed to England and retired owing to failure of health. Absence, 3 years. Service, 34 years. From 1856 until his death he was Rector of Sheinton, Shropshire and in 1857 appointed Honorary Life Governor of the CMS. He was Rural Dean of Condover, Salop (in which Rural Deanery area his parish lay) from 1862 to his death. He died suddenly at Sheinton on 3 April 1871, aged 79. Benjamin Bailey founded CMS Kottayam station, which has continued to be the centre of the society’s work in Travancore (Kerala); established the printing press, from which have issued complete editions of the Malayalam Bible, Prayer-book, Dictionaries, etc., translated and compiled by him, and printed under his superintendence with press and type of his own construction (the first type cut in the language). He cut the types and constructed a wooden printing press with the help of local silversmiths from descriptions given in an encyclopaedia. Bailey, who moulded the round and sleek Malayalam types making use of indigenous know-how, is therefore considered the first Malayalam typographer. The types moulded by Bailey are characterized by legibility and economy. The fact that Malayalam still low the shape of Bailey’s types attests to their beauty and usefulness. He also supervised the making of two beautiful founts of Malayalam types in England, while he was on furlough, printed the Malayalam Gospels there with those type, he and his eldest son being improvised compositors of the same and bought them back to Kottayam. The moulds cut in England were used for a long time in the CMS press at Kottayam. Benjamin Bailey translated the whole of the Bible and the Common Prayer into Malayalam and printed them. The ‘Bailey Bible’ helped in formulating the modern Malayalam prose just as the King James Version helped in the development of the English language. Bailey’s Bible translation provided the base for a new Malayalam prose style that developed and flourished. The ‘high Malayalam’ and the ‘colloquial Malayalam’ were combined by Bailey to produce a new ‘middle-path Malayalam prose’. B. Bailey did in Malayalam prose (formation of the prose language based on ‘Manipravaalm’) was nothing except that, Ezhuthachan did in Malayalam poetry (formation of the poetic language based on ‘Manipravaalm’). We can find and observe the development and evolution of the middle path Malayalam prose style in ‘Cheru Paithangalkku Upakarartham Paribhashappeduthiya Kathakal’, ‘Bailey Bible’ and ‘Sathya Vedathilulla Kathakal’ (all these three books were translated, printed and published by B. Bailey). The linguistic basis of this new prose style was defined and declared by Bailey in his dictionary, ‘A Dictionary of High and Colloquial Malayalim and English’. (In those days, Malayalam spelt as ‘Malayalim’). As noted already, Benjamin Bailey was the first lexicographer in Malayalam. He compiled, printed and published two dictionaries: ‘A Dictionary of High and Colloquial Malayalim and English (1846, Malayalam-English Dictionary), and, ‘A Dictionary, English and Malayalim’ (1849, English-Malayalam). It is notable that the Maharajas (Kings) of Travancore assisted the publication of these two dictionaries and they appreciated Bailey very much for compiling the dictionaries. Bailey’s dictionaries were long in use as reference works. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Benjamin Bailey (missionary)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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