Testament again. His early and untimely death in 1719, left this work incomplete. Ziegenbalg had reached up to the book of Ruth. “He followed the system of division into chapters, but thought it better to give up that into verses as owing to the different construction of the language, what would come first in Greek or Hebrew would come last in Tamil, and thus came confusion.”⁴³

It is interesting to note that Ziegenbalg was unaided in his work of translating, apart from the Malabar writer who wrote what Ziegenbalg dictated, he neither wished nor summoned aid. In 1708, he wrote, “... I require no help from others, and even if I wished for it, I could not get it. Neither amongst the Christians nor the Malabarians can I find one person who could translate a sentence without mistakes.”⁴⁴

Ziegenbalg’s translation was not completely accepted. In 1740, a linguistic dispute arose between the Cuddalore Missionaries and those of Tranquebar. Ziegenbalg’s translation has been revised by Pressier Walter and Worm (of Tranquebar) but Geister and Benjamin Sculze (of Cuddalore missionaries) declared the revised edition to be a complete failure. Beschi by now (of the Roman Catholic Mission) had already created for himself a niche in the Tamil world and he criticised the language of the Tranquebar missionaries. Beschi and the Tranquebar missionaries were destined to fight many a battle. After a lengthy dispute the revised edition of Ziegenbalg was given up.

43. J.F. Fenger. op. cit. P. 64.

44. Ibid. P. 65.