ABSTRACT
Protestant missionaries in Bengal had long been concerned with the problem of training Bengali preachers and teachers. They realized that the supply of European missionaries was strictly limited and that they could never hope to evangelise India’s enormous population without the assistance of her own people. 1 Moreover, some missionaries felt that Indians themselves could, in any case, carry out the task more effectively than Europeans. ‘Even supposing we had ten thousand Western Missionaries in this land’, wrote a contributor to the Calcutta Christian Observer, ‘they could never effect the good that native preachers might effect. Their ability to bear the heat, their knowledge of their own tongue, and of the modes of thought and kinds of error of their hearers, give them an advantage which we can never fully attain’. 2 Finally, there were important financial considerations. Missionary societies were anxious to reduce expenditure, and it was felt that Bengali preachers could live more cheaply than Europeans. 3
