The Bible Tongue

Abstract Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922), a Brahmin Christian convert, was a charismatic and brilliant scholar and Indian missionary leader from western India. As a figurehead of women’s rights, her contribution to the field of women’s emancipation, reform, and education is well-documented, as is her role in the twentieth-century history of Indian Christianity. Famous for founding the Mukti Mission for women in 1898, Ramabai translated the Bible from the original Greek, Hebrew, and revised English versions into Marathi in 1924. Ramabai’s Marathi Bible represents a historical moment that marks the emergence of new Christian fervor, Christian Revival, and Pentecostalism that radically transformed Indian Protestant Christianity. As this chapter explores, Ramabai’s Bible was more than a simple translation; it was a hermeneutical enterprise between the Brahminical Hindu world and Christianity that represented conversion, expressed through the metaphor of language. Using the power of spoken Marathi to express religious devotion—a tradition popular among bhakti sants in the centuries before her—Ramabai’s quotidian and everyday vernacular forms of Christian devotion in her Marathi Bible served to highlight the importance of Pentecostalism for Indian women, producing them as modern and grassroots Christian leaders and Bible women.