Manuscripts hoard long overlooked

Press, 7 January 1983, Page 11

Manuscripts hoard long overlooked

By GRAHAM HEATHCOTE, of the Associated Press, through NZPA

London The world's oldest Bible society is unlocking the secrets of a hoard of ancient manuscripts overlooked in its basement for more than a century. Wrapped in brown paper, • historical treasures inde a fourth-century Coptic "Gospel of St John on Papyrus. and an Indian love story inscribed .in nineteenthcentury Tamil on palm leaves.

There is also a piece of wood inked in Chinese script: the identity card of a Manchu cadet soldier killed by British troops' in 1842 at Chinkiang Fu in the last action of the first Opium War.

The manuscripts, most given by well-wishers, are stored in a basement-turned-strongroom beneath the headquarters of the British and Foreign Bible Society, which has been publishing and distributing Bibles in several languages since 1804. “Our library upstairs of printed Bibles has more than 24,000 volumes and is one of the world’s best. But hardly anyone knew about the manuscripts in the basement,” said the society’s librarian, Alan Jesson. Helped by a team of linguists and a $13,200 grant from the State-owned British Library, the society hired an Italian graduate in ancient history, Maria Rosaria Falivene, to list the manuscripts. Her two-year task completed, the historical catalogue of the manuscripts of Bible House Library went on sale on November 23. It lists 504 items in 183 languages and sells for about $lB.

Other . libraries are expected to be the main buyers. “The catalogue required more expert advice and assistance than .any other produced in our 178 years,” Mr Jesson said.

Tom Houston, executive director of the society, said the 252-page volume “transports you to distant places and older times, when pioneering individuals were not afraid to go anywhere and do anything, for little reward.” Kathleen Cann, the society’s archivist, said mostof the manuscripts were translations from the Bible by missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.“ The other things were often given to us, sometimes in the belief that they were Biblical,” Miss Cann said, pointing out some examples. “This turned out to be a law book, and this one, given to us as being an Old Testament, is a translation into Mongolian of the Tibetan medical classic known as ‘The Sword.’ It was copied out in Siberia by one of our agents who thought it would help him to learn Mongolian. “That one, labelled as a Koran, is the work of a Sufi mystic.” The collection includes extracts dated 1816 from St Matthew’s Gospel in Bullpm, a minority tongue in Sierra Leone. The society believes it’s the earliest missionary translation into an African language in the colonial era. Among the curiosities is a seventeenth-century account of antiquities in Mexico written in the Nahuatl language, and an 1815 ode to the society in Icelandic.