ABSTRACT
For the early Christian missionaries in Bengal, with grand visions of building up a Christendom in South and Southeast Asia,3 printed books and tracts translated into native languages seemed to be an effective way of disseminating the Word of God to a society which could not understand spoken English. The Christian missionaries who came to Bengal in the early half of the nineteenth century registered a tremendous demand for their vernacular tracts. Initial reports on the reception of tracts were very encouraging. Christian missionaries distributing their tracts in Bengal came across several instances of these being read aloud to groups in shops, in the open fields and other places. Perhaps, these served as relaxing exercise in between hours of hard physical labour. The efforts of missionaries to spread the printed Christian message in Bengal in the early nineteenth century had failed miserably. The ambitious agenda of translating, printing, and publishing Christian works in the vernacular, had completely overlooked the reader.
