He arrived in South India in 1740 to take charge of a small Tamil Lutheran congregation in Madras and expanded it during his stay.
[2] In 1740 Johann Philipp Fabricius arrived in South India to take charge of a small Tamil Lutheran congregation in Madras.
[3] An important area of work started initially by Ziegenbalg and then later on taken up by Fabricius was Tamil Christian hymnody.
[2] In 1761, British East India Company forces invaded Pondicherry, which was then a French colony, and acquired a printing press.
When the spoils of war were brought to Madras the printing press was passed on to Fabricius to aid his missionary work as well as to be used for the East India company's publications.
"The four qualities which Fabricius found in the originals were lucidity, strength, brevity and appropriateness; these were sadly lacking in the existing Tamil translation, but he hoped that by the help of God he had been able to restore them.
[5] The New Testament which emerged from the Press in 1758 was a peculiar combination; the first seven books had no sign of influence of Fabricius while the rest of the work was entirely the translation done by him.
During the process of translation, Fabricius had to face a lot of difficulty due to the lack of enough printing paper in Tranquebar.
The poet Vedanayagam Sastriar paid tribute to this work by calling it "the golden translation of the immortal Fabricius.