By the 1960s, the Latin American and European continents were well served by a variety of editions of The Herald of Christian Science. The time had come for nations in the vast Asian subcontinent to receive the Herald.
In January 1960, The Christian Science Board of Directors asked Helen Wood Bauman, then Editor of the religious periodicals published by The Christian Science Publishing Society, and Associate Editor for the Herald, George Nay, to look into the possibility of producing a semiannual Asian edition of the magazine.
Research into various Asian languages followed, along with discussions as to which languages would be included in the new multilingual magazine. The number of languages chosen was important, because it would affect the number of pages devoted to each language if equal treatment were given to each language. Proposals ranged between three and four languages, although the report forward to the Board by Bauman and Nay made clear that it would not be possible to cover such a vast part of the world with only four languages.
