The Burmese Bible; Sarah (1831 - 1834)

C H A P T E R

The Burmese Bible; Sarah

[ 1831-1834 ]

UT, as always, along with the triumph there was tragedy. During the Shwe Dagon celebration, Adoniram received word that Boardman had died a few days before while returning to Tavoy from the mountain Karens.

Though he knew his days were numbered, Boardman had insisted on making the arduous expedition. He had become a great leader to the shy Karens, and had promised to visit them and help baptize them. So, carried on a cot by the Karens, and accompanied by Sarah, his two-year-old son George, and Francis Mason, a newcomer to the Tavoy mission, he had journeyed for three days into the hills to a bamboo chapel the Karens had built beside a stream at the foot of a mountain range. Here he saw thirty-four of the Karens baptized by Mason. On the way home, thundershowers had soaked the whole party. Boardman, wet and cold, was permitted to lie on the porch of a house by the river belonging to a native of Tavoy. In the morning a boat was brought up to take him the rest of the way. But it was too late. He had hardly been placed aboard when he died.

Adoniram wrote to Sarah a few days after he learned the news. His opening words may have been cheerless, but he knew he could tell her the truth:

You are now drinking the bitter cup whose dregs I am somewhat acquainted with. And though, for some time, you have been aware of its approach, I venture to say that is far bitterer than you eXpected. It is common for persons in your situation to refuse all consolation, to cling to the dead, and to fear that they shall too soon forget the dear object of their affections. But don’t be concerned. I can assure you that months and months of heart-rending anguish are before you, whether you will or not. Yet take the bitter cup with both hands, and sit down to your repast. You will soon learn a secret, that there is sweetness at the bottom....

He added that he hoped she would stay on as a missionary to the Karens. As for her son George,1 she was promised that, when the boy was old enough to leave Burma, Adoniram would try to secure for him the best education she could wish. Or, should Sarah herself die unexpectedly, if she would commit George to Adoniram: “I hereby pledge my fidelity to receive and treat him as my own son, to send him home in the best time and way, to provide for his education, and to watch over him as long as I live.”

For a while after Boardman’s death Sarah thought she should return to America, particularly on account of her little son. Per—haps Adoniram’s letter helped change her mind. At any rate, she finally decided she belonged in Burma. She knew Burmese pretty well; she knew the Karens. They liked and trusted her. She had a flourishing school which probably would not continue if she left.

The Karens, in fact, were much easier to convert to Christianity than the Burmese. They were a primitive people, jungle dwellers, not even accustomed to live in villages, and their simple animistic beliefs offered no such resistance to a highly developed religion as did Buddhism. Christianity could flow into a religious vacuum, so to speak, instead of having to displace an already well organized doctrine.

Besides, the Karens had some peculiar legends which suggested the Bible, even including one about the consequence of the eating of forbidden fruit from a “tree of death.” One of these involved a Creator called “Y’wa,” who had seven sons, of whom the Karen was the first-born, the white man the youngest. Y’wa was to go on a journey and invited the Karen to go with him. The Karen refused because he had to clear his field. The Burman refused, too, but he and the Karen each gave their father a gift. Finally the white brother went with Y’wa. When they reached the “celestial shore,” Y’wa made a silver and gold book for the Karen, a palm-leaf book for the Burman and a parchment book for the white man. But the white

1The baby boy, Judson Wade Boardman, had died in September. man kept the silver and gold book for himself, and sent the Burman with the parchment book to the Karen. The Karen, who was still busy clearing his field, scarcely looked at the book. Instead, he left it on a stump. When he burned his clearing the book was ruined and the pigs and chickens ate what was left. But, said the legend, some day the white brother would bring the Karens the lost book from across the water. Naturally, some of them took the missionaries for that “white brother” of the legend.

The Boardmans, in fact, when they first arrived in Tavoy, heard of a Karen teacher or sorcerer who had such a sacred book which the Karens of his village had been worshiping for twelve years. They brought the book to Boardman to see whether it contained the ChriStian Gospel. Tenderly the old sorcerer lifted a bundle from a basket, unfolded numerous wrappings, and revealed a badly worn copy of the Oxford Book of Common Prayer with the Psalms. Suppressing a smile, Boardman told the people that the book was good, but not to be worshiped. Worship was reserved for the God revealed in the book.

Thus, the Karens were well prepared for the missionary message. The worst problem was reaching them—they moved about so nomadically. Finally Boardman tried persuading them to settle down in villages in the hills, the first of which he named Wadesville for Jonathan Wade, who had baptized the first Karens in the vicinity.

After her husband’s death, Sarah made periodic mission journeys herself into the hill country in whatever spare time she felt free to take from her school. A white woman, dressed European fashion, always accompanied by little George, she became legendary herself. One of the Karen men always carried the boy, and they referred to him among themselves as “the little Chieftain.” There were no roads, and once she wrote to Mrs. Mason from the jungle, “Perhaps you had better send the chair, as it is convenient to be carried over the streams, when they are deep. You will laugh, when I tell you, that I have forded all the smaller ones.”

Sometimes she startled exploring white men. For instance, a young British officer stationed at Tavoy remembered meeting her deep in the jungle while he was on a hunting trip. He had taken refuge from the rain in a wayside zayat, and while his breakfaSt was being prepared was philosophizing to himself on the primitiveness of these desolate mountain fastnesses. All of a sudden a beautiful, smiling white woman appeared in front of him, dripping with rain, surrounded by a party of Karen followers.

“The lady seemed as much surprised as himself,” it was recounted years later; “but she curtsied with ready grace, as she made some pleasant remark in English; and then turned to retire.” When she returned in dry clothing, she put her stores with his to provide a better breakfast than either could have supplied alone. They talked for a long time and became good friends. But the man never forgot his amazement when intrepid Sarah Boardman unexpectedly materialized before him, a blue-eyed apparition of the mountains, in the rainy jungle deep in the wild Karens’ hills.

By late July, 1831, Adoniram had finished the translation of Genesis, twenty chapters of Exodus, Psalms, the Song of Solomon, and Daniel. But he was needed at Moulmein. Mrs. Wade’s health had become so bad that all the missionaries agreed her husband must take her to the United States. Adoniram waited until two new missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. John Taylor Jones, arrived at Rangoon before leaving for Moulmein himself. On his arrival he found that the church for Europeans built up by Kincaid had grown. Reports from the Karens in the north were encouraging, but not much success had been achieved among the natives of Moulmein.

Nevertheless, the overall results, measured by the standards of those early years when he and Nancy were desperately trying to make even a single convert, were amazing. It had taken Adoniram and Nancy nine years to baptize eighteen native converts. But in the first five years since the war, Adoniram was to report in a few months, 242 natives had been baptized, plus n3 foreigners. From the beginning in 1831, therefore, the total number of baptisms stood at the end of x83x at 373, of which 2x7 had been made during this one year. If the missionary forces continued to grow at this rate and if they worked as hard in the past as they had recently, they might look forward to years when they would make thousands of converts—and perhaps even in some distant future to the Christianization of Burma.

By now Adoniram was the senior— he avoided thinking of him- 404. T O T H E G O L D E N self as the chief executive—of a fair-sized group of missionaries. Some died, some left, usually some were away from Burma attempting to recover health, but the total on hand was seldom much less than a dozen.

He nOted, however, that most of them had a tendency to cling in a group to the most comfortable station, Moulmein, safely under British protection. Some, like the Wades and Bennetts and Masons and Sarah Boardman, voluntarily struck into front-line areas such as Rangoon, Tavoy and the interior; but not even any of these cared to make another trial of Ava in the Burmese heartland. And from Ava he himself was barred until that unlikely time when king and court might change their feeling about him.

No one on earth was better qualified than he to pioneer in these or in other places. He knew more about the Burmese language and peOple than any other white man alive. And almost everything the Burmese knew about Christianity they had learned from him—either directly through hearing him, or through reading something he had written or translated, or through meeting someone he had taught.

He no longer had any ties to hold him back. Wife, children—all were dead, martyrs to the mission. He had the command of native idiom and the experience to deal with people who had never heard of the Gospel. He felt, moreover, that neither teaching in native schools nor preaching to British soldiers was not the primary task of a missionary, useful though those occupations might be. He felt, to tell the truth, that some of the missionaries were slower in learning the language than necessary merely because of their tendency to immure themselves in Moulmein where everyone knew at least a word or two of English.

His health was good. He had just turned forty-three, but he looked much younger than his age. His face was still almost unlined, his spare, slight, compact body as vigorous as ever, his step still springy and rapid as he took the long morning walks to which he credited his health. Therefore he usually volunteered to undertake pioneering trips, and in fact preferred them to staying in Moulmein.

Only one thing deterred him. This was the knowledge that the complete Bible was not yet translated into Burmese, and there was no one else to do it. So he oscillated. At times his wishes and his freedom drove him into the remOte hill regions; but at other times his conscience and his fondness for scholarship chained him to a desk.

That September, for instance, he went up the “Dah-gyne” (Dagyaing today) River four or five days’ journey above Moulmein to Wadesville, where Wade had baptized the first Karens. But within a week he came down with jungle fever and had to return to Moulmein. While he was recovering, the Wades returned. Their ship to America had been so buffeted about by storms that it began to sink and had to make for the Arakan coast. Here, during their two months’ detention, Mrs. Wade’s health improved so much that they decided to return to the mission.

But by the beginning of 1832 he was well again and at Wadesville with a small group of native converts, some of them deacons of the Moulmein congregation. From here the members of the party would go out in different directions for several days at a time, then reunite to move farther up the river before scattering again into the jungle hill villages. The rivers were their highways. As they went farther and farther up the narrowing tributaries, they had to chop passages for the boats through trees which had fallen across the streams.

Here and there they found small clusters of disciples still strong in the faith. Others had backslid. One church member had made an offering to a demon called a “nat” when his child was deathly sick; but he repented so vociferously that the transgression was forgiven. A few presented themselves for baptism.

One woman, remarked Adoniram with amusement, the wife of a man named Loo—boo, “presented herself for baptism, with twelve Strings of all manner of beads around her neck, and a due proportion of ear, arm, and leg ornaments! and strange to say, she was examined and approved, without one remark on the subject of her dress. The truth is, we quite forgOt it, being occupied and delighted with her uncommonly prompt and intelligent replies.”

The next day before breakfast, Adoniram mentioned the subject of female dress.

. it was truly amusing and gratifying to see the said lady, and another applicant for baptism, and a Christian woman who accompanied them, divest themselves, on the spot, of every article that could be deemed merely ornamental; and this they did with evident pleasure, and good resolution; to preservere in adherence to the plain dress system. We then held a church meeting, and having baptized the four applicants, crossed the Leing-bwai on a bridge of logs, and set out for Tee-pah’s vil—lage, accompanied by a long train of men, women, children, and dogs.

All through January the missionaries roamed through the jungles, sometimes crossing high mountains, sometimes fording mountain streams barefoot, cutting their feet on the sharp stones. Sometimes individuals underwent surprising changes of heart in mere hours. Once an old man of some importance in a village, a Buddhist Karen, was openly contemptuous. He would not invite Adoniram to his village, but he would not forbid his coming. Adoniram sent word to him:

I would not come, but, as he loved falsehood and darkness, I would leave him to live therein all his days, and finally go the dark way; and all my people drew off to the boat.

While we were deliberating what to do, something touched the man’s heart; we heard the sound of footsteps advancing in the dark, and presently a voice. “My lord, please to come to the village.”

“Don’t call me lord. I am no lord, nor ruler of this world.” “What must I call you? Teacher, I suppose.”

“Yes, but not your teacher, for you love to be taught falsehood, not truth.”

“Teacher, I have heard a great deal against this religion, and how can I know at once what is right and what is wrong? Please to come and let me listen attentively to your words.”

I replied not, but rose and followed the old man. He took me to his house, Spread a cloth for me to sit on, manifested great reSpect, and listened with uncommon attention. When I prepared to go, he said, “But you will not go before we have performed an act of worship and prayer?” We accordingly knelt down, and, during prayer, the old man could not help now and then repeating the close of a sentence with emphasis, seeming to imply that, in his mind, I had not quite done it justice. After I was gone, he said that it was a great thing to change one’s religion; that he stood quite alone in these parts; but that, if some of his acquaintances would join him, he would not be behind.

Another time, Adoniram had to leave a hostile village after trying unsuccessfully “to conciliate the children and dogs, who cried and barked in concert.” But in another village, the chief himself applied for baptism and admission into the church.

Altogether, thought Adoniram when he returned to Moulmein after a six weeks’ absence, it had not been an unsuccessful expedition. He had baptized twenty—five converts and as many more were “hopeful inquirers.”

He remained only a few weeks in Moulmein. At the end of February he set out for the Karen villages on the Salween River. It was a dangerous expedition. In some areas the countryside was “swarming with tigers” and they had to curl themselves up in their boat to sleep. The hills back from the streams were heaped up of “craggy rocks” and the mountains were “stupendous” ——the whole country a “desert,” inhabited only by “scattered immortal beings.” On this trip, which lasted about a month, there were nineteen conversions and one dismaying apostasy. “May Byah-ban, of whom we all had such high opinion, joined her husband, not many days after their baptism, in making an offering to the demon of diseases, on account of the sudden, alarming illness of their youngest child; and they have remained ever since in an impenitent, prayerless, state! They now refuse to listen to our exhortation, and appear to be given over to hardness of heart and blindness of mind. I was, therefore, obliged this morning, to pronounce the sentence of suSpension, and leave them to the mercy and judgment of God.” But Adoniram could not help sympathizing with them. “They are quite alone in this quarter, have seen no disciples since we left them, and are surrounded with enemies, some from Maulmein, who have told them all manner of lies... ”

Back at Moulmein he found that Bennett had arrived from Calcutta with a new and complete font of Burmese type and was already beginning to print his newest version of the New Testament. The Wades had left for Rangoon, but when Wade had to return to Moulmein a few months later on account of a serious illness requiring medical aid, Adoniram begged him to stay on. He had begun to see that correcting the proofs of the New Testament would keep him in Moulmein for months and he would have no time for expanding the aCtivities of the mission.

As a matter of fact, he was in the grip of a bigger idea. Looking over what he had done on the Old Testament, he saw that about a third was done and calculated “that I could finish the whole in two years, if I confined myself exclusively to the work.... " Otherwise, it might drag on for years, and possibly never be done, in View of the “uncertainty of life.”

But this meant that the Wades would have to take charge of the Moulmein church and the nearby Karens. The Wades, recognizing the importance of having a complete printed Burmese Bible, agreed. Adoniram promptly prepared a room “at the end of the native chapel.” Here he shut himself up for the next two years, “and I beg prayers of my friends that, in my seclusion, I may enjoy the presence of the Saviour, and that special aid in translating the inspired word which I fully believe will be vouchsafed in answer to humble, fervent prayer.”

All through 1832 and 1833 Adoniram worked on translation. On December 15, I8 32, he sent to the press the last sheet of the New Testament, about two weeks after the Wades had sailed to America to recoup Wade’s shattered health. The Wades had taken with them Prices’ children and two converts, a Burman and a Karen. Inevitable changes had occurred. The Bennetts’ two daughters, Elsina and Mary, had sailed to the United States, leaving their brokenhearted mother behind. But the missionaries had learned that their children muSt go to a temperate zone as soon as they could travel if they were to live to adulthood. Jones had gone to Siam, Kincaid took up the work in Rangoon.

The printing, performed by Bennett and a new missionary named Cutter, had become a big business. The printing house was of brick, and more than fifty feet long. There were two printing presses and all the materials for a stereotype foundry. Here Bennett printed, in 1832, between his arrival in March with the types and the end of the year, 3000 copies of the New Testament, and 3 3,000 copies of tracts and catechisms, including some in Karen and Taling and 3 Karen spelling book. Altogether, around two and a half million printed pages came out of the printing house that year.

There had been more conversions in 18 32 —— 126 natives, most of them at Moulmein and Tavoy. Rangoon, paralyzed under the dark shadow of Ava, received only three.

The opening of 1833 brought additional missionaries from the United States—one of them Miss Sarah Cummings, an unmarried woman. Later there were to be accessions to the mission forces. But as usual, they could not be of much real use until they became fluent in the language; and that would be a matter of years. At leaSt one of these had come out with the understanding that his service was to be for a limited period of years. Adoniram was disturbed, like all his experienced colleagues.

I much fear [he complained to the Corresponding Secretary at home,] that this will occasion a breach in our mission. How can we, who are devoted for life, cordially take to our hearts one who is a mere hireling?... I have seen the beginning, middle, and end of several limited term missionaries. They are all good for nothing. Though brilliant in an English pulpit, they are incompetent to any real missionary work. They come out for a few years, with the view of acquiring a stock of credit on which they may vegetate the rest of their days, in the congenial climate of their native land... The motto of every missionary, whether preacher, printer, or schoolmaster, ought to be “Devoted for life.”

Meanwhile, Adoniram was trying to spin out into Burmese twenty-five to thirty verses of the Old TeStament every day. Most of the time he secluded himself in his study. But even when he went up country for a few days or weeks he took his books with him and continued his studies.

The job he had set himself was a difficult one, for he had never been content to translate from English into Burmese. Since the English Bible was itself a translation from Greek and Hebrew, this would have required the people of Burma to read a translation of a translation. He felt this double straining would sieve out too much of the meaning. Instead, he translated the Greek and Hebrew directly into Burmese, using whatever critical and scholarly commentaries he had available—and he had a good many. For years, even before leaving Salem in 1812, he had been accumulating the necessary library, and whenever he heard of a new book that might be useful he wrote for it. Working this way he hoped to produce a Burmese Bible which, while it would certainly need plenty of revision, would not have to be done all over again within a few years.

At the end of June, 1833, only the minor prophets and the historical books remained to be done. He had hopes of finishing the entire translation' by the end of the year. Nearly seven years had passed since Nancy’s death. The first of those years he had descended into an emotional and Spiritual valley of shadows, where he had dwelt in the chilly gloom of his memories. Now he was climbing out from the half-death of its depressing shades into the sunshine of life.

Translating, he was in isolation, yet occupied with what he was sure was the most useful work he could possibly do. He took pride in the tangible results. Some of the missionaries could preach in Burmese or Karen. All of them could preach in English. Most of them could teach. Some could print. But only he had the incomparable combination of abilities and knowledge to make a Burmese Bible that would stand for generations. This he knew full well. He leaned over backwards to avoid boasting, but deep in the recesses of his mind he must have heard again echoes of the words his father so often spoke to him when he was a boy: “Adoniram, I expect you to become a great man.” The words themselves may have long been lost to conscious memory; but such words are never really forgotten.

In the work and the accomplishment, his frozen emotions began to melt. He began to participate in the feelings of others. He wrote to Mrs. Bennett about her two daughters, “... Those poor culprits, Elsina and Mary, do so frequently squeeze out the tear, that it is painful to think of them. I don’t wonder that you say your heart is ready to break. I almOSt wonder that you can breathe.” And to the Bennetts, when they had left for Rangoon, “... I never have had a tighter fit of low Spirits than for about a week after you had gone. I sometimes went, after dinner, to take a solitary walk in the veranda, and sing, with my harmonious voice, ‘Heartless and hopeless, life and love all gone.’ However, I am rallying again, as the doctors say."

He was becoming conscious of his loneliness in a new way. It was as if deadened nerves of sensation were returning to life and once again beginning to feel. There was pain in it, but a dawning prescience that there might be pleasure, too. By cutting close personal ties, he might have cut the possibility of another pain like that of Nancy’s death. But the suspicion was stirring that the sweetness of the association could be worth the pain.

In this transitional mood he wrote at the end of the year to his mother and sister:

I still live alone, and board with some one of the families that compose the mission. After the Wades left, I boarded with the Bennetts. After the Bennetts left for Rangoon, I boarded with the Cutters. After the Cutters left for Ava, I boarded with the Hancocks, where I now am. I have no family or living creature about me that I can call my own, except one dog, Fidelia, which belonged to Little Maria, and which I value more on that account. Since the death of her little mistress, she has ever been with me; but she is now growing old, and will die before long; and I am sure I shall shed more than one tear when poor Fidee goes.

So new thoughts and feelings began to put out their delicate, seeking tendrils as the translation of the Old Testament slowly approached its conclusion. He did not finish, as he expected, by the end of 1833. But two months later, January 31, 1834, he was able to write:

Thanks be to God, I can now say I have attained. I have knelt down before him, with the last leaf in my hand, and imploring his forgiveness for all the sins which have polluted my efforts in this department, and his aid in future efforts to remove the errors and imperfections which necessarily cleave to the work, I have commended it to his mercy and grace; I have dedicated it to his glory. May he make his own inspired word, now complete in the Burman tongue, the grand instrument of filling all Burmah with songs of praise to our Great God and Saviour jesus Christ. Amen.

With the translation finished he suddenly felt released. He began to look around him. He began to think of the life remaining to him. He was forty-six years old.

A few weeks later he received a letter from Tavoy. It was dated February 17, 1834. It went:

My Dear Brother:

The translation of the Bible into Burmese is an event, t o ' which thousands have looked forward with joyful anticipation, and for which, thousands now perishing in their sins, should fall on their knees in thanksgiving to God, and through which, thousands yet unborn will praise him for ever and ever.

My dear brother, I dare not pass encomiums upon a fellowmortal in speaking of the Word of God; and if you think me guilty of this impiety in what I may say, bear with me yourself, and pray God to forgive me. I have, for the last four years, been in the daily practice of reading attentively the New-Testament in Burmese; and the more I study it, the better I am pleased and satisfied with the translation. I am delighted with the graphic style of the narrative part; and think many of the doctrinal passages are expressed with a force and perspicuity entirely wanting in our version. How much of this is due to your vivid manner of eXpression, and how much to the nature of the language, I do not know. I sometimes tell the Masons, that I should be willing to learn Burmese for the sake of being able to read Scriptures in that language.

Last Lord’s-day, while reading a portion of Scripture, I was affected to tears, and could scarcely proceed, as is often the case, in reading striking passages; and the effect was also observable on the old Tavoyan, for he managed to bring a great part of it into his prayer, which immediately followed. My scholars are now reading the Gospel of Luke; and I am reading St. John’s Gospel and Revelation alternately, at evening worship.

Yours affectionately,

SARAH H. BOARDMAN The simple warmth of the letter pleased Adoniram as much as the words of praise. She had occupied a special place in his heart for a long time. When her husband had died, she had not left Burma like the widows of other missionaries. Undaunted, she had stayed and carried on his work as well as she could. Cheerful, tactful—yes, and beautiful—she had even dared to carry the Word by herself through the tiger-haunted jungle. The vision of her fording streams and crossing the hills as she went from Karen village to village, her little son carried by one of the native converts who accompanied her, smiling and unafraid in the face of danger and hardship, rose irresistibly to his mind.

She had not tried to cut herself off from the world. She had not sat for days by an open grave. She had equably accepted what came as the will of God and kept on with His work.

She was altogether different from Nancy —- calmer, less dominant, with less fire but perhaps more glow. But she reminded him of Nancy. She must, he suspected, have reminded him of Nancy a long time ago, for before her husband had died Adoniram had given her a watch of Nancy’s, a watch he had given Nancy when he was still at Andover and she at Bradford. He had thought he gave Sarah Boardman the watch because he had no use for it. But he could as easily have given it to someone else, the wife of another missionary—Mrs. Wade or Mrs. Bennett, for instance.

At any rate, she was alone and he was alone. Why should they not live out their years together, and find together what companionship and comfort they could for the rest of their lives? She was thirty years old. He was forty-six. They should have a good many years.

Adoniram was not usually a man to waste time. He wrote to Tavoy.

On the first of April he left Moulmein. On the sixth he arrived in Tavoy. On the tenth, he and Sarah Hall Boardman were married by Mason. The very same day they left for Moulmein with little George.

He had no feeling—nor did Sarah—that they were betraying their late spouses. Adoniram made that amply clear in his journal before embarking:

Once more, farewell to thee, Boardman, and thy long-cherished grave. May thy memory be ever fresh and fragrant, as the memory of the other beloved, whose beautiful, deathmarred form reposes at the foot of the h0pia tree. May we, the survivors, so live as to deserve and receive the smiles of those sainted ones who have gone before us. And at last may we all four be reunited before the throne of glory, and form a peculiarly happy family, our mutual loves all purified and consummated in the bright world of love.