Joshua, D.D., an eminent missionary, was born at Westbury Leigh in Wiltshire in 1767, and was sent to the East Indies in 1799 by the Baptist Missionary Society, to join the Serampore Brethren, as Dr Carey and his colleagues were styled. On reaching the sphere of his labours, Marshman, in addition to his more special duties, engaged in the study of the Bengalee, Sanscrit, and Chinese languages, which, after great perseverance, he succeeded in mastering. He afterwards translated into Chinese the book of Genesis, the four Gospels, and the Epistles of Paul to the Romans and the Corinthians. In 1809 he published a Dissertation on the Characters and Sounds of the Chinese Language; in 1811 he produced The Works of Confucius, containing the Original Text, with a Translation; and in 1814 appeared his Clavis Sinica. He also wrote Elements of Chinese Grammar, with a Preliminary Dissertation on the Characters and Colloquial Medium of the Chinese—all printed at Serampore. As the result of his Sanscrit and Bengalee studies, he engaged with Dr Carey in 1815 in writing a Sanscrit grammar, and in 1825 a Bengalee and English dictionary. Owing to some painful misunderstanding which arose between the Serampore Brethren and the committee of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1815, and which resulted in their acting for some time as separate bodies, Dr Marshman was induced in 1826 to visit England, where the causes of difference were subjected to strict scrutiny. The famous John Foster, with whom Dr Marshman resided, shook off his languor for a time in order to get to the bottom of this matter; and after the most ample opportunity of acquainting himself with all the circumstances of the case, and while admitting that Marshman's conduct was regulated too much on the principle of silent punctuality and cautious "management," he nevertheless unhesitatingly alleged, "I believe there is not in Christendom a man more highly and uniformly conscientious, a man more anxiously and scrupulously solicitous to do right in all things." He returned to Serampore in 1829, but did not enjoy the satisfaction of witnessing the re-union of the mission there with the parent society, concluded in London a few days before his death, which took place on the 5th of December 1837. After the conversion of Rammohun Roy to Christianity, Dr Marshman replied to a work of the rajah assailing the miracles of Christ, entitled The Precepts of Jesus the Guide to Peace, in a series of articles in the Friend of India, subsequently collected and published under the title of A Defence of the Deity and Atonement of Jesus Christ, in Reply to Rammohun Roy of Calcutta, London, 1822; to which the rajah published a reply in the second London edition of his book in 1824.