7/3/23, 11:40 AM Translating the Scribe: Lithographic Print and Vernacularization in Colonial India, 1857–1915 | Comparative Critical Studies

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Translating the Scribe: Lithographic Print and Comparative Critical Studies

Vernacularization in Colonial India, 1857–1915 ...Show full title Print ISSN: 1744-1854
Online ISSN: 1750-0109
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Published on behalf of the British Comparative
Amanda Lanzillo Literature Association

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Abstract
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 Subscribe / Renew
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 Table of Contents Alerts

of lithographic publishers into scribal education. The patronage of Urdu-language scribal Submit an Article | Librarian Free Trial | Mailing List
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.

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https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/ccs.2019.0331 2/2