27/08/2026
Can a Scottish reprint of a 17th-century Dutch Gospel help revive an Indigenous language in Taiwan?
In the New College collections is William Campbell’s 1888 trilingual edition of The Gospel of St. Matthew. Though seemingly another Victorian missionary publication, its parallel columns of Siraya, Dutch, and English tell a story that reaches well beyond the book’s original purpose—a story of language, translation and a text whose significance changed over time.
Daniel Gravius, a Dutch pastor in 17th-century Taiwan, crafted his Siraya-Dutch Gospel in the hope that it might serve local Austronesian-speaking “heathen,” as Campbell put it, in a language and idiom they could comprehend. After several decades out of sight following the Dutch departure in 1662, the Romanised script re-emerged in the Qing period, mainly for land leases, sales and other transactions. The latest surviving document dates from 1818. Meanwhile, spoken Siraya followed a different course, receding from everyday use amid migration, intermarriage and shifting rule, but leaving traces in religious hymns and place names.
In 1888, Campbell reprinted Gravius’s Gospel in London, adding English alongside the original languages. By doing so, he kept an otherwise rare text in circulation and made an early record of Siraya available for missionary work. The text travelled from Taiwan to the Netherlands and then to Britain, acquiring another life in Campbell’s edition.
Campbell could not have imagined what came next. When Siraya activists and linguists began recovering their ancestral language in the late 1990’s, the Gospel offered something more valuable than a list of forgotten words: a language in use, revealing grammar, expression and meaning through narrative. Alongside other historical texts, it contributed to dictionaries, teaching materials and new generations of speakers. In July 2026, after years of activism and cultural renewal, Taiwan officially recognized the Siraya as its 17th Indigenous group, a decision supported by historical records such as Campbell’s edition and the living voices they enabled.
View the Gospel and consider what its history tells us about the life of a book.👇
