Birth: 24-07-1803
Home Calling: 11-07-1882
Homeland : England
Place of Vision: Sri Lanka and India
Peter Percival was a British missionary, linguist, and pioneering educator in Sri Lanka and South Tamil Nadu during the British colonial era. Percival was sent to the Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka in 1826 by the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS). He spent much of his adult life in the Jaffna peninsula until 1851 with a short stint in Bengal (1829-1832). While in Bengal, he was influenced by the educational policies of Alexander Duff, a Presbyterian missionary. He realized that education must be the basis for fruitful missionary activity.
Back in Jaffna, Peter started several schools and upgraded the existing ones for primary education. He moved from village to village in the district, establishing schools and recruiting teachers. The schools not only helped improve literacy but also changed the social conditions and especially served as mediums of evangelization. He believed that the Bible should be taught in the local language rather than English or Portuguese. Hence in collaboration with his former student and Tamil Scholar Arumuka Navalar, Peter translated the Bible into the vernacular Tamil language. This encouraged the people to read the word of God by themselves and grow spiritually. He also established St. Paul’s chapel in Jaffna in 1836 as the first center for Tamil worship.
In 1851, he returned to England, where he has ordained a deacon and taught at St Augustine’s College, Canterbury, for few years. Later he came back to India in 1854 and ministered in Madras. He was also appointed the professor of vernacular literature at the newly founded Madras University. His multi-lingual dictionaries and books on Indian culture helped the later missionaries to come prepared for the ministry. He spent his last days in Yercaud in Tamil Nadu and went to be with the Lord in 1882.
