8vo, (198 x 128 mm). 82 ff., 28 ff. (of an unidentified work). Unbound. Bound with an unidentified Bengali work.

The publication immediately provoked one of the most influential religious controversies of colonial India. Joshua Marshman and the Baptist missionaries at Serampore condemned Roy's omission of Christ's divinity and atoning role, prompting Roy to issue a series of Appeals to the Christian Public defending his position through close textual analysis of the New Testament itself. This exchange transformed The Precepts of Jesus from a modest devotional compilation into a seminal work in the history of Christian-Hindu dialogue and established Roy as an internationally recognised Unitarian thinker.

Modern scholarship increasingly regards the work as one of the earliest examples of comparative biblical criticism produced outside Europe. R. S. Sugirtharajah has observed that Roy's compilation deserves recognition alongside Thomas Jefferson's Life and Morals of Jesus, both published in 1820, as pioneering attempts to recover what each author regarded as the authentic ethical message of Christ by removing later theological accretions. David J. Neumann likewise argues that The Precepts of Jesus was central to Roy's broader intellectual project of presenting Jesus as a universal moral teacher while simultaneously challenging orthodox Trinitarian theology.

The work also occupies a central place in the emergence of the Brahmo movement. Although the Brahmo Samaj itself would not be formally established until 1828, historians have long recognised The Precepts of Jesus as one of the defining texts in Roy's programme of monotheistic reform. As Shyamal K. Chatterjee notes, the ethical principles articulated in The Precepts profoundly influenced the religious outlook subsequently developed within the Brahmo Samaj, making this volume a foundational document in the intellectual origins of modern Indian liberal religion.

Printed at the Baptist Mission Press in Calcutta—a press that played a pivotal role in the development of vernacular printing and missionary scholarship in British India—the present volume stands at the intersection of Indian religious reform, missionary publishing, and early nineteenth-century global intellectual exchange. It remains one of the most influential books produced in colonial India and one of the earliest sustained attempts by an Indian scholar to reinterpret the New Testament for a universal, non-confessional readership.

Shyamal K. Chatterjee, "Rammohun Roy and the Baptists of Serampore: Moralism vs. Faith," Religious Studies 20, no. 4 (1984), pp. 669–680.

David J. Neumann, "The Father of Modern India and the Son of God: Rammohun Roy's Jesus Christ," Journal of Religious History 45, no. 3 (2021), pp. 367–389.

R. S. Sugirtharajah, "Textually Conjoined Twins: Rammohun Roy and Thomas Jefferson and their Bibles," in The Bible and Empire: Postcolonial Explorations (Cambridge University Press, 2005).