Subscription Publishing and the Eighteenth-Century Origins of Indian Print Culture (original) (raw)
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Print Cultures in the Making in 19th- and 20th-Century South Asia: Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries
Philological Encounters, 2021
The study of the history of print technology in South Asia is a multidisciplinary enterprise which involves attentive consideration of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the region, as well as of the historical time in which print technology was massively adopted, namely the colonial period. Here, we focus on the complex fabric of relationships between print and modes of recording and using texts in long present oral and manuscript cultures, also pointing out the limits of applying interpretative models based on the cultural history of Europe to the histories of print in South Asia. Furthermore, we present aspects of the formative stage of print cultures concerning Vedic, Limbu, Nepali, Newari, and Tamil textual traditions—which are studied in the essays of this special issue. This multi-layered perspective helps making sense of social and cultural dynamics concerning the uses of printed books, the (new) meanings associated with them, and the formation of hegemonic configurati...
Indian Economic and Social History Review, 2016
This article offers one of the first scholarly analyses of the impact of print on religion in India in the middle of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the publishing project of Arumuga Navalar, one of the most important authors and editors of Tamil Shaiva works. I examine details of some of Navalar’s key publications, especially his 1852 prose rendition of the Tamil Shaiva classic Periya Puranam. This work was part of Navalar’s effort to make Shaiva canonical texts, traditionally composed in verse, more widely accessible. He employed prose and print to defend established Shaiva caste and ritual practices; to respond to Christian critiques of Hinduism; and to marginalise Shaiva voices that questioned caste or engaged in ritual innovation. I argue that in nineteenth-century South India, print served as an effective tool to disseminate messages of established religious interests.
In: C. Pecchia, J. Buss, A. Chudal (eds.), Print Cultures in the Making in 19th- and 20th-Century South Asia. Special Issue in Philological Encounters 6, 2021
The study of the history of print technology in South Asia is a multidisciplinary enterprise which involves attentive consideration of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the region, as well as of the historical time in which print technology was massively adopted, namely the colonial period. Here, we focus on the complex fabric of relationships between print and modes of recording and using texts in long present oral and manuscript cultures, also pointing out the limits of applying interpretative models based on the cultural history of Europe to the histories of print in South Asia. Furthermore, we present aspects of the formative stage of print cultures concerning Vedic, Limbu, Nepali, Newari, and Tamil textual traditions-which are studied in the essays of this special issue. This multi-layered perspective helps making sense of social and cultural dynamics concerning the uses of printed books, the (new) meanings associated with them, and the formation of hegemonic configurations within literary and religious traditions.
Translating the Scribe: Lithographic Print and Vernacularization in Colonial India, 1857–1915
Comparative Critical Studies, 2019
Focusing on the lithographic print revolution in North India, this article analyses the role played by scribes working in Perso-Arabic script in the consolidation of late nineteenth-century vernacular literary cultures. In South Asia, the rise of lithographic printing for Perso-Arabic script languages and the slow shift from classical Persian to vernacular Urdu as a literary register took place roughly contemporaneously. This article interrogates the positionality of scribes within these transitions. Because print in North India relied on lithography, not movable type, scribes remained an important part of book production on the Indian subcontinent through the early twentieth century. It analyses the education and models of employment of late nineteenth-century scribes. New scribal classes emerged during the transition to print and vernacular literary culture, in part due to the intervention of lithographic publishers into scribal education. The patronage of Urdu-language scribal manuals by lithographic printers reveals that scribal education in Urdu was directly informed by the demands of the print economy. Ultimately, using an analysis of scribal manuals, the article contributes to our knowledge of the social positioning of book producers in South Asia and demonstrates the vitality of certain practices associated with manuscript culture in the era of print.
Chāpā-Puthis: Some Print-House Practices in Mid-nineteenth Century Calcutta
International Journal of Islam in Asia 3 (2022) 205–226, 2023
From the 1840s, one of the most visible print genres in the popular 'Battala' book trade in Calcutta was the so-called chāpā puthis. Such works, though printed, adhered faithfully to the distinctive layout and typography of the Islamic manuscript tradition which had been current for several centuries in Bengal. They were also among the most lucrative of literary properties, and when the passage of Act XX of 1847 gave copyright protection to books printed in British India., the printers who seized upon the act with the greatest alacrity were those of "chāpā puthis." The printers of such puthis used the title-page to provide copious metadata, in the process laying bare the often invisible ecology of labor of the print-house. This article will provide a preliminary account of the printing and publishing history of the genre, with its focus on print-house practices, and in particular, the figure of the compositor.
Popular printing and intellectual property in colonial Bengal
This article surveys the early history of printing in colonial Bengal, in particular the rise of the indigenous book trade in the Battala area of Calcutta. The article argues that the likes of Gangakishore Bhattacharya and Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay were among the first to attempt to socialize the printed book, leading to the rise of a substantial interpretive community by the middle of the 19th century. At the same time, traces of manuscript book practice lingered in the printed book, especially in the disposition of the title-page and other paratextual apparatus. This article scrutinizes the interface between the manuscript and the printed books, and asks how the conceptions of intellectual property, authorship and entailment evolved within the ambit of the popular book trade. By looking at a number of title-pages from the period, the article tries to examine the relationship between intellectual property and the rise of the popular.
PRINT MEDIA COMES TO NORTH EAST INDIA
The geographical, demographic and historical isolation of the region have exercised considerable influence on the growth of print media in North East.History of Print Media for the North East however remained less documented and read till today. Scholars of mainland India have less interest of conducting research on this area, while scholars of North East lack in terms of resources and scope. In this context, this paper seeks to offer a fundamental reading of the history of print media in the seven states of North East India. It is however by no means, a complete compendium of the history of press in North East India. It does offer only a rudimentary level of historical documentation and attempts to reflect the specificities of advent of print media in the seven sisters of North East India. It is a documentation of the summary of the advent of Print Media in North East both from primary and secondary data.