‘A Christian Benares’

Abstract

By using the case of the Baptist missionaries called the ‘Serampore Trio’—Rev. William Carey, Rev. William Ward and Rev. Joshua Marshman—this article urges that science and Christianity were intimately related in early nineteenth-century north India. The Serampore Baptists practised a brand of Christian and constructive orientalism, devoting themselves to the recovery of Sanskrit science and the introduction of European science into India. Carey established an impressive private botanical garden and was instrumental in the formation of the Agricultural Society of India. Ward, in his important account of Hinduism, argued that true Hindu science had given way to empiricism, and that Hindus had confused nature with the divine. The Serampore College formed by the trio sought to educate Indians with respect to both Sanskrit and European science, and utilised a range of scientific instruments and texts on science published in India. The College aimed to change the way its pupils saw the material world by urging experimentation rather than reverence of nature. The style of science practised at Serampore operated outside the traditional framework of colonial science: it did not have London as its centre, and it sought to bring indigenous traditions into a dialogue with European science, so that the former would eventually give way to the latter.