In 1850, the first Tamil Bible was published by the Madras Auxiliary of the BFBS, but the translation failed to meet the expectations of the people.
To ensure speedy translation of the Bibles into South Indian Languages, the Madras Auxiliary of the BFBS came into being in 1820.
With the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) at Calcutta in 1811, the onus of publishing Bibles in Indian languages fell on the shoulders of BFBS. Benjamin Schultze and John Philip Fabricius also extended help in this great effort. However, the real effort taken to translate the Bible into Tamil was the German missionary Bartholomew Ziegenbalg in 1706, at Tranquebar. The first literature to be ever published, in an Indian language, was ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ in Tamil by the Jesuits, dating as far back as 1578. The Tamil script, commonly known as the Vattezhuthu, originated from the Brahmi script. It now enjoys the classical status of a classical language by an act of legislation in 2004. Tamil is an ancient Dravidian language, rich in literature and poetry.
