Jhom The Oxford Compamion to t

Suagez nd
-N andhyn (ouP

41

The History of the Book in

the Indian Subcontinent
ABIIIJIT GUPTA

TheMS book 4 The other presidencies: Bombay nd

Madras
2 Eary p1inting: fiom Goa to the
Malabar coast 5 Printing in north India
6 Print and the nation
3 Printing inthe east: Seranpore nd
Calcutta 7 Publishing after 19-47

1The MSbook

The Indian subcontinent is home to more languages than anywhete else in the
world. The Indian constitution recognizes 22 official languages, but thenumber
ofmother tongues in India exceeds 1,500, ofwhich 24 are spoken by a milion or
more people. Any history of such a diverse constituency is bound to be selective
and incomplete. This is true for the book as well, especially in the pre-print era.
Although the first printing with movable type in India occurred as early as in
1556, almost two and ahalf centuries were to pass before print was able to infil
trate the intellectual world configured by the MS book. This should not be sur
prising, for the history of the MS book in the Indian subcontinent is along and
highly sophisticated one, dating back to at least the 5tt century Bc. It is beyond
the scope of this essay totreat the MS book in any detail, but it is essential to
have an understanding of somneof its basic features.
The rise of heterodox movements such as Buddhism and Jainism triggered a
movement from orality to literacy in India. Orthodox Hinduism set little store
by writing, and its key texts, the Vedas, were memorized and transmitted orally
(see 2). Agreat deal of significance
ificance was attached to the spoken word and the
performative aspects of the text. There are some technical terms in later Vedic
works that might be taken as evidence for writing, but that task was assigned to
the clerical caste of kayasthas who did not enjoy any great social prestige. On
the other hand, the need to transcribe correctly the teachings of the Buddha and
 SUBCONTINENT
T54 HISTORY oF THE BOOK IN THE INDAN

5th century Bc in which

Mahavira led to awidespread MS tradition fTOm the more
authenticity andcanonicity were the chief impulses, as opposed to the
(collections of stories about the
prosaic aims of Hindu MS practice. The Jatakas and wooden peas (var
Buddha) mention wooden writing boards (phalaka)
school curriculum. Buddhist MSS
naka), and lekhaor writing as part of the
universities. When the Chinege trav
were mostly produced in monasteries and professional copyists at
eller Fa Xian visited India in the 5th centuryCE, he saw Chinese visitor to the
another
work at Nalanda University; two centuries later, Buddhist MSS. Similarty, Jain
university, YiJing, reportedly carried away 400
even nuns.
copvistswere monks and novices, sometimes
ancient India is the tali
The earliest known substrate for recording texts in
pat or writing palm (Corypha umbraculifera),
which is native to the Malabar
around a cen
coast of southern India and has palmate leaves folding naturally also used for
leaves were
tral rib. The tree was extensively cultivated, since the believed that there
thatching and the sap fermented to make palm wine. It is
north, but this also meant
was a rich trade in the leaves from the south to the
that the Buddhist scriptoria in Bihar and Nepal were heavily dependent on the
tali
availability of the leaf. One of the earliest accounts of the general use ofthe
pat throughout India is from Xuan Zang, who described it in the 7th century CE.
In about 1500 CE, the talipat was supplanted by the palmyra, which was eaier
to cultivate and commercially more valuable, owing to the range of products it
yielded. Reed pens were used with the talipat, while an iron stylus was used
with ink
with the palnyra. After the grooves were scored, they were smeared
seera to
and then cleaned with sand. In north India, the bark of birch and aloe
have been extensively used, the former in the western Himalayas, the latter in
the Assam valley. Birch bark was known as bhurjapatra, and is frequently men
tioned in northern Buddhist and Brahmanical Sanskrit works (Buhler, 1973).
After writing, the finished stack of leaves was strung on a cord through pre
bored holes and protected by a pair of wooden covers. This form of the book
known as the puthi or pothi-survived until the mid-19h century, with some
minor variations. In Nepal, for example, covers of valuable MSS were sone
times made of embossed metal, while Jain MSS were kept in sacks made of
white cotton.
Papermaking had been knowm in China from the beginning of the first mil
lenniumn CE, but it reached India via the Turks after their conquest of northern
India in the early 13 century (see 10). There is some evidence of papermaking in
the Himalayan region before this period, especially in Nepal, but it never posed a
serious challenge to palm-leaf MSS. With the beginnings of Muslim rule in
India, paper became the substrate of choice, as no material other than paper was
considered suitable for writing in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu (see 40). The rich
traditions of illumination, illustration, and calligraphy in these languages
required exceptionaly high-quality paper, which sometimes had to be imported
from places such as Iran. For bindings, leather and board were used: these could
not be used for Hindu MSS. Perhaps the richness and sophistication of the
 HISTORY OF rHE BOoK IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT | 555

Mughal MS tradition was one reason why printing failed to make nuch impact
in north India, despite the presentation to the Emperor Akbar of a copyof Chris
topher Plantin's polvglot Bible in 1580. This historic gift was made when a dele
gation of Portuguese Jesuits visited the emperor at Fatehpur Sikri (see 7). In a
rnchly symbolic response, the emperor had several of the engravings in the Bible
copied by his own painters.
Although the Hindu and Muslim MS traditions took somewhat different
routes, they were both instrumental in creating highly evolved communication
networks. Access tothe production and ownership of MSS was restricted in the
Hindu and Buddhist traditions, yet the rise of the vernaculars in the second
millenniumcE saw a much wider diffusion of the culture of writing and read
ing. The examples of the great Indian epics Mahbhrata and Rmãyana dem
onstrate how new interpretive communities were formed once the Sanskrit
hegemony was challenged, and created a kind of 'social memory mediated by
the book. On the other hand, the Islamic MS traditionin India was a direct
result of court patronage, and consequently much more opulent. Given the cen
trality of the Qur'n to Islam, book arts such as calligraphy and illumination
were accorded the highest prestige. Outside court circles, guilds of seribes acted
as purveyors of knowledge and information, leading to the creation of a robust
publicsphere.
The coming of print did not immediately precipitate abattle of books. More
often than not the printed book took its cue from the MS book, and for a while
there was space for both forms. Ultimately, however, it was the loss of political
power to the British that undermined the cultural and social authority of the
MS tradition. Under the new political dispensation, thevoice of power would
henceforth be articulated through print.

2 Earlyprinting: from Goato the Malabar coast

Print arrived in India by accident. In 1556, King João III of Portugal despatched
a group of Jesuit missionaries and a printing press to Abyssinia, at the request
of its emperor. When the ship put in at Goa, a Portuguese colony on the west
coast of India, news came that the emperor had changed his mind. The Portu
guese authorities in Goa had not been particularly keen to introduce printing to
the area, but they now found themselves with not just a press but a printer. He
was Juan de Bustamante,a Jesuit brother from Valencia, reportedly accompa
nied by an Indian assistant trained in printing at Lisbon (see 9).
The first book to be printed in Goa was Conmcusõese outras coisas, in 1556.
Unfortunately,no copy is extant, a fate shared by most of the early publications
from Goa. The first Indian language rendered in the medium of print was Tamil.
This might appear odd, given that the lingua franca in and around Goa was
Konkani. But the Jesuits, led by Francis Xavier, who died in Goa in 1552, had
established an extensive network of Jesuit missions along the Coromandel coast
andhad baptized more than 10,000 Tamil-speaking Parava fisher-people. Akey
 556HISTORy or THE BoOK IN THE
INDIAN SURCONTINENT
figure in the new technology was Henrique Henriques, a
produced five books in Tamil script and language, Portuguese Jew, who
as well as a Tamil grammar
and Dictionary. In 1577 Henriques's first book was printed at Goa: Doctrina
Christam, Tampiran Vanakkam, a translation of a Portuguese catechism of
1539. This book was not only the first tobe printed with Indian type, but the
Tst with non-roman, metallic type anvwhere in the world. The Tamil type for
the book was prepared by the Spaniard Juan Gonsalves, a former blacksmith
and clocknaker, with assistance from Father Pero Luis, a Tamil Brahmin, who
had entered the Jesuit order in 1562.
Bustamantewas asked by the Portuguese Jesuits to set up a press at the Col
lege of st Paul in Goa, and it waS under the imprint of the college that most of
the early publications were issued. Other printers who were active in Goa dur
ing this period were João de Endem and João Quinquencio. "Their output may
be described as modest, having little or no impact outside the immediate circle
of missionary activity. Printing was too alien and expensive an activity to elicit
morethan polite interest locally, while the finished product-the printed book
was regarded as part of the paraphernalia of church ritual. Even within mis
sionary circles, the protocols and potential of printing were only partially
appreciated. In the context of Goa, it seems that the printed book was seen
solely as a toolfor evangelizing. According to Priolkar, 'Printing activity contin
ued to prosper so long as the importance of local languages for the purpose of
proselytisation was fully appreciated' (Priolkar, 23). This was reinforced by the
Concílio Provincial of 1606, which stated that no cleric should be placed in
charge of a parish unless he learnt the local language. Yet Priolkar has argued
that this stipulation was steadily undermined through the 17h century, until a
decree was promulgated in 1684 which required that the local populace aban
don the use of their mother tongues and switch to Portuguese within three
years. It is therefore not surprising that printing camne to a standstill in Goa at
about the same time, in 1674. Another century anda half was to pass before it
would reappear, in 1821.
The next significant printing initiative took place in Tranquebar (now Tha
rangambadi), on the east coast of India, and was triggered by the aival of the
Danish Lutheran missionary Bartholomew Ziegenbalg in 1706. The nearest
Jesuit mission at Elakkuricciwas less than 50 miles away, and a battle began
between the two rival missions to win the hearts and minds of the local people.
Ziegenbalg spent long sessions with an Indian pundit learning local language
and customs. To his parent body, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowl
edge, he wrote:
Imust confess that my School-Master...has often put such Philosophical Ques
tions to me, as really made me believe...one might discover things very fit to
entertain the curiosity of manya learned Head in Europe...We hope to bring him
over to the Christian Knowledge; but he is confdent as yet, that one time or other
we willall turn Malabarians. (Priolkar, 37)
 HISTORY OF THE NOOK IN THR INDIAN SURCONTINENT 557

He sent his emissaries far and wide, to buy up books from the widows of schol
arly Brahmins, and left dectailed deseriptions of the MSS:
As for the Outside of these Books, they are of a quite different Dress from those in
Burope, There is neither Paper nor Leather, neither Ink nor Pen used by the
Natives at al, but the Characters are by Iron Tools impressed on a Sort of Leaves of
a Certain Tree, which is much like a Palm-Tree. At the End of every Leaf a Hole is
made, and througlh the IHole a Sturing drawn, whereby the whole Sett of Leaves is
kept together. (Priolkar, 39)
Between 1706 and 171, Ziegenbalg wrote a mumber of letters to the SPCK ask
ing for aprinting press:
We heartily wish to be supplied with a Malabarick and a Portuguese printing press
to save the expensive charges of gettingsuch books transcribed as are necessary for
carrying on this work. I have hitherto employed Six Malabarick writers in my
house..."Tis true those books which we get from the Malabar heathens must be
entirely transcribed; or brought up for ready money, if people will part with them;
but such as lay down the grounds of our holy religion, and are to be dispersed
among the heathens,must be carefully printed off for this design. (Priolkar, 40)
In a remarkably shrewd move, Ziegenbalg argued that the book's form and con
tent were indivisible, and the 'superior' technology ofprinting must be employed
to confer an equivalent superiority upon Christian teachings. Convinced by his
arguments, the SPCK despatched a press to Ziegenbalg in 1711, with a printer,
Jonas Finck. After many vicissitudes the ship arrived, but not Finck, who disap
peared off the Cape of Good Hope after the ship had been waylaid by the French
anddiverted to Rio de Janeiro. Asoldier was found to work the press, and print
ing began in October 1712.
The press's crowning work was Zäegenbalg's 1715 Tamil translation of the
New Testament-the first such translation in any Indian language. The fount
bore a close resemblance to the letters in the palm-leaf MSS, while the language
used was a version of demotic Tamil spoken in and around Tranquebar. The
type had originally been cast at Halle in Germany, but it became necessary to
cast smaller founts for the various publications undertaken by Ziegenbalg. A
typefoundry was set up in Poryar, the first in India, and this was followed by the
establishment of thefirst modern paper mill in the country in 1715. With these,
the Lutheran mission attained a degree of self-sufficiency in printing, and was
no longer entirely dependent on the long supply chin from Germany. This self
sufficiency can be gauged from the press's high output: 65 titles from 1712 to
1720,52 more in the next decade, and a total of 338 titles for the 18th century.
The mission also received requests from the Dutch in Ceylon toprint in Tamil
and Sinhalese. Apress at Colombo was reportedly set up by Peter Mickelsen,
one of the casters of Tranquebar's types. The first book printed in Ceylon was
an octavo Singhalese prayer book produced in I737-8 for the East India
Company.
 558 HISTORY OF THE BOOK IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

And what. of theJesuits? In 1717, the controversial and colourfulC. G. Beschi

arrived in Elakkuriccinear Trichinopoly and stayed there for the next threedec
ades. Despite his meddling in local politics and ostentatious habits, he was una
ble to raise sufficient resources to take on the well-funded Lutheran5 and was
forced tofall back on palm-leaf MSS. The only weapon in his arsenal was his
vastly superior knowledge of Tamil: what ensued was a battle of books--MS
versus print, Jesuit versus Lutheran, purity versus contamination--in many
ways anticipating the clash between the rival intellectual worlds of MS and
print in 19h-century Bengal. Though Beschi poured scorn on his rivals for their
imperfect knowledge ofTamiland their flawed translations of the scriptures, he
was fighting a losing cause, and soon the Jesuits were in retreat in the region,
leaving the field clear for Protestants.
After Tranquebar and Colombo, the scene for printing shifted to Madras
(now Chennai). In 1726, Benjamin Schultze set up a branch of the SPCK at
Vepery, outside Madras. By the middle of the century, it was under the care of
Johanmn Philipp Fabricius. In 1761, the English under Sir Eyre Coote successfully
besieged the French at Pondicherry, and the spoils of war included a printing
press seized from the French governor's palace. This press would probably have
been used for Jesuit printing, so its loss was a further blow to the Society of
Jesus in the region. Coote took the press and its printer to Madras, where Fabri
cius persuaded him todonate the press to the SPCK, on condition that printing
orders from Fort St George-the seat of the Madras presidency-would take
precedence over mission work. Soon the SPCK acquired its own press: the Eng
lish war booty was returned to Fort St George, where it was renamed the Gov
ernment Press, while the Vepery Press now became the SPCK Press. It was on
this press that Fabricius printed his famous Tamil-English dictionary in 1779.
In 1793 the Press produced a Tamil translation of The Pilgrim's Progress: this
was a bilingual edition, with English on the left and Tamil on the right side of
every page.
In many ways the fortumes of the Pondicherry press were symbolic of the
momentous changes taking place in mid-i8h-century India. Coote's military
action dealt a decisive blow to French colonial aspirations, leaving the way clear
for theBritish. Just four years earlier, in 1757, Robert Clive had won a historic
battle at Plassey in Bengal, defeating the last independent nawab of Bengal, and
paving the way for theterritorial expansion of the East India Company in India.
As centres of administration were set up in the three presidencies of Calcutta,
Madras, and Bombay, print became an indispensable component of the engine
of colonization. The missionaries, who had thus far championed print, suddenly
found their efforts being swiftly outstripped by government printing.

3 Printing in the east: Serampore and Calcutta

If religionwas behind the coming of print to west and south India, the initial
impulse in Bengal was almost entirely political., In 1778 Nathaniel Brassey
 SUBCONTINENT559
HISTORY OF THE BO0K IN THE JNDIAN

A
GRA MMAR
O F T H E

BENGAL LANGUAGE
NATHANIEL BRASSEY HALHED.

PRI N TE D
AT

HOOGLY IN BENGAL

The first British use of Bengali founts: N. B.

Halhcd, AGranmar of thc Bengal Languagc
(1778). The Bodleian Libray, University of
Oxford (EE 48 Jur, title page)

Halhed, a civil servant of the East India Company, produced the first printed
book in the Bengali language and script, A Grammar of the Bengal Language.
Initially, William Bolts was asked to design the Bengali type, but his design was
not to Halhed's liking. The task was then entrusted to Charles Wilkins, also a
civil servant with the Company, who cast the type with the help of Pancnan
Karmakr, a smith, and Joseph Shepherd, a seal- and gem-cutter. The printing
was carTied out on a press at Hooghly, possibly owned by one John Andrews.
The Company itself paid for the printing, in a somewhat miserly manner.
By the end of 1800, there were as many as 40 printers working in Calcutta
(now Kolkata). This was unprecedented not just in India, but in the whole of
south Asia. Although presses in Madras remained mainly in government
hands, Calcutta saw a large number of private entrepreneurs open printing
offices. The almost overnight rise of the periodical press is also remarkable. In
the period 1780-90, seventeen weekly and six monthly periodicals were
launched in Calcutta; almost all of the city'sprinters were connected with the
periodical press at some time. Chief among them was James Augustus Hicky,
who was the editor of the first newspaper in India, the weekly English
language Bengal Gazette (1780), and who went to jail for his fearless-and
sometimes scurrilous-criticism of the governing council. As far as book pub
lishing was concerned, Andrews's press had travelled to Calcutta via Malda
and had acquired a new name-the Honourable Company's Press-and was
now run by Charles Wilkins. This press accounted for a third of all books
printed in Calcutta before 1800,including Asiatick Researches, the journal of
the newly established Asiatic Society. Books andperiodicals were, however, not
 560 | HISTORY OF THE B00K IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

the chief sources of revenue for the Calcutta printing trade. stationery, legal
and mercantile forms, handbills,cte. formed the staple of their survival,a fur
ther sign that the trade was coming of age. The most characteristic product of
the trade was the almanac, with three different calendars: Muslim, Hindu, and
Christian. In fact,the trade in almanacs stillcontinues to be a lucrative sector
of the Bengali book trade.
Materials and cquipment--type, paper, ink, and the presses-had to be
imported from Europe. Some type was manufactured locally, notably by Daniel
Stuart and Joseph Cooper, who set up a foundry for their Chronicle Press. Along
types, the latter
with Bengali, this foundry also made Devnagari and nasta»ligcontinued
being used for printing in Persian. The availability of paper to be a
Patna sup
problenn. Good-quality paper had to beimported from Britain, while
plied the local handmade variety, which was considerably cheaper. There were
several unsuccessful attenmpts to set up paper mills in Calcutta during this
period. John Borthwick Gilchrist, principal of Fort William College in Calcutta
and founder of the Hindustanee Press, was not alone in complaining bitterly
about the unscrupulousand fraudulent behaviour of printers, referring to 'typo
graphical quicksands, and whirlpools, on the siren shores of oriental literature
and deploring the 'eternal treacherous behaviour' of his Bengali assistants
(Shaw, Printing, 24-5).
Two events in 1800 were to have a momentous effect on printing in south
and southeast Asia. The first was the establishment in Calcutta of the Fort Wil
liam College to train the British civilians of the East India Company. The second
was the establishment of a Baptist mission at Serampore (25 km from Calcutta)
by William Carey, an ex-cobbler, who arrived at Calcutta in 1793. His first fevw
years in India werespent in Malda, working for an indigoplanter, and learning
Bengali and Sanskrit from his munshi (language teacher), Rm Rm Basu. His
early attempts to set up a mission in British India failed, as the Company was
hostile towards missionary activity. Eventually, Carey was permitted to estab
lish his mission in Danish-controlled Serampore (then known as Fredericksna
gar), where he was joined by two other Baptists, William Ward and Joshua
Marshman. In the meantime Carey had acquired a wooden hand press, thanks
to the munifcence of George Udny, the indigo planter who had supported Carey
and his family.
The Serampore mission was founded on 10 January 1800. In August that
year, a Bengalitranslation of St Matthew's Gospel was published by the press.
About the same time, Carey joined Fort William College as a teacher of Bengali
and Sanskrit, for a salary of Rs. 500. The same mission that had been refused
permission by the government now became a partner in training the future elite
of theRaj.
The efforts of Carey and his assistants soon made the Serampore Mission
Pres the most important centre of printing in Asia. Pancnan Karmakär, the
goldsmith trained in type production by Wilkins, was borrowed' by Carey from
Colebrooke, and then put under virtual house arrest in Serampore. With the
 HISTORY Or THE, BOOK IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT 561

help of Pancnan and his son-in-law Manohar, a typefoundry was set up in

March 1800. In its first ten years, the foundry produced type in at least thirteen
languages. The printing press was in the immediate charge of Ward, who left
detailed accounts of its day-to-day running. In a letter of 1811 he wrote:
Asyou enter, your see your cousin in a small room, dressed in a white jacket, read
ing or writing,and looking over the office,which is more than 170ft. long. There
you find Indians translating the scriptures intothe different tongues and correct
ing the proof-sheets. You observe, laid out in cases, types in Arabic, Persian, Nagari,
Telugu, Panjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Chinese, Oriya, Burmese, Kanarese, Greek,
Hebrew and English. Mussulmans and Christian Indians are busy composing,
correcting,distributing. Next are four men throwing off the scripture sheets in dif
ferent languages, others folding the sheets and delivering them to the largestore
room, andsix Mussulmans do the binding. Beyond the office are varied type-casters
besides a group of men making ink, and in a spacious openwalled round place,
our paper-mill, for we manufacture our own paper. (Koschorke, 59-60)
Not surprisingly, translations of the Bible accounted for the bulk of the publica
tions. Between 1800 and 1834,the Serampore Press printed bibles in almost 50
languages, 38 of which were translated at Serampore by Carey and his associ
ates. There were altogether I17 editions, of which 25 were in Bengali. It seems
that the Press supplied bibles to almost all significant Baptist missions in the
region, from Indonesia in the east to Afghanistan in the west. From the report
for 1813, it appears that a Malay bible in roman characters was in preparation,
while a five-volume reprint of the entire Bible in Arabic was being undertaken
for the lieutenant-governor of Java. The memorandumn of 1816 claims that a
Chinese Pentateuch was in the press, and that the neW moveable metal type,
after many experiments, are a complete success. The 1820 report records the
printing of the New Testament in Pashto, and also the setting up of apaper fac
tory: After experiments lasting for twelve years, paper equally impervious to the
worm with English paper, and of a firmer structure, though inferior in colour, is
now made of materials [from] the growth of India' (Grierson, 247).
Perhapseven moresignificant than the bibles were the Bengali translations
of the two great epics Rmyana and Mahbhrata. These were published dur
ing 1802-3, and marked the first appearance of the epics in printed form, in any
language. The Press also published dictionaries, grammars, dialogues or collo
quies,Sanskrit phrasebooks,philosophy, Hindu mythological tales, tracts, and
the first newspaper in Bengali, the Samachar Durpun. The first number of this
twice-weekly, bilingual (Bengali and English) paper was published in May 1818.
According to a calculation made by the missionaries themselves, a total of
2,120,000 itemsof print in 40 languages were issued by the Serampore Press
from 1800to1832.
Along with the mission's own publications, the Press also filled orders from
Fort William College. During the first two decades of the 19h century, the col
lege played a crucial role in producing grammars and lexicons in all the major
Indian languages, a task carried out by Indian and European scholars.
 562 HISTORY OF THE Bo0K NTHE
INDIAN
SUBCONTINENT
Altogether, 38 such works were produced in Arabic,
Braj, Bengali, Marathi, Oriya, Panjabi, Persian, Sanskrit, Urdu,
Telugu,and Kannada. Another impor
tant category was ancient Indian tales and
into modern languages,especially Urdu andverses, translated for classroom use
programme had a twofold aim: to produce Bengali. The colleges publications
textbooks for its students, and to
encourage scholarly editions of books with no immnediate
Besides the Mission Press, two other presses printed for the pedagogical value.
was the Hindustanee Press of John Gilchrist. College. The first
which specialized in Persian
Arabic printing, especially in nasta 'liq. The second was the Sanskrit Press of
Bäburm Sarmm, the first Indian to own a press in Bengal (he was succeeded
by Lallull in 1814-15, whowas also a teacher at the college). In 1808 the college
noted:

a printing press has been established by learned Hindoos, furnished with com
plete founts of improved Nagree types of different sizes, for the printing of books
in the Sunskrit language. This press has been encouraged by the College to under
take an edition of thebest Sunskrit dictionaries, and a compilation of the Sunskrit
rules of grammar. (Das,Sahibs, 84)
The College's publications did not have much impact beyond the classroom and
European circles. This lack was filled by the Calcutta School-Book Society
(founded in 1817), which began to commission and publish some of the earliest
secular school textbooks in Bengali and English. Its establishment coincided
with that of the Hindu College in the same year. For more than half a century, the
CSBS published hundreds of titlesfor cheap or gratuitous supply...to schools
was
and seminaries of learning. Significantly, the Society's charter stated that it
from
not itsdesign to furnish religious books: a restriction however very far
School
being meant to preclude the supply ofbooks ofmoral tendency ([Calcutta from
Book Society, ii]). From 1821, the Society was assisted by a monthly grant
depository at
the government; a few years later it acquired its own press and
Lallbazar. In 1823, the Calcutta Christian Tract and Book Society was set up to
short time it had
supply books tomissionary-aided vernacular schools. Within a figures.
published a large number of tracts whose press runs often went into five
Literature Society. But the
A similar role was played by the Christian Vernacular
was the scholar and reformer
man whohad the most impact on the textbook trade started the
I[varacandra Vidysgar. While a teacher at Fort William College, he
Tarklankr. Both
Sanskrit Press in 1847, along with his colleague Madanmohan former's two-part
legendary:the
men produced Bengali primerswhich became popularity can be
Barnaparicay (1855) and thelatter's Sisu[ik_ (1849). Their (respectively) of
gauged from the fact that in 1890, the 149h and 152d editions
typography into an
the two primerswere issued. Vidysgar reformed Bengaliso-called Vidysgar
alphabet of 12 vowels and 40 consonants and designed the
saat or type case, for greater ease of composition.
Bythe middle of the19h century, printing had spread to Assam, with Baptist
periodical,
missionaries setting up a press there and starting the first Assamese
 HISTORY Or THE. BOOK IN THE IN)IAN SUBCONTIN ENT | 5b3
Arunoday, in 1846. After a slow beginning, Dhaka
second half of the century, with the Girish exploded into print in the
by 1900. Thetrade in Bengal Press printing more than 500 titles
had become sufficiently large to
graphicalcontrol. James Laong,a philologist require biblio
and
bibliographies of printedworks in the 1850s, the ethnographer, compiled three
first of their kind
Descriptive Catalogue of Bengali Works (1855) contained 1,400 in India. His
and periodicals in Bengali. A high entries on books
proportion
under such categories as textbooks, translations,
of the titles were accounted for
dictionaries, grammars, law
books, and religious literature, but the trade in popular books flourished
This was commonly-and often pejoratively-known as the Bat-tala as well.
reference to the north Calcutta location where such books were mostlytrade, in
printed.
According to Long,
Few Bengali books are sold in European shops. A person may be twenty years in
Calcutta, and yet scarcely know that any Bengali books are printed by Bengalis
themselves. He must visit the native part of the town and the Chitpoor road, their
Pater Noster Row, to gain any information on this point. The native
presses are
generally in by-laneswith little outside to attract, yet they ply a busy trade. (Ghosh,
I18)
Oneof the pioneers of this new literature was Gangaki[or Bhattchrya, consid
ered the first Bengali printer, publisher, bookseller, and newspaper editor. After
beginning his life as a compositor at the Mission Press, in 1818 he set up his own
Bangal Gezeti Press, and was also responsible for printing the first illustrated
book in Bengal, Bhratcandra's Annadmangal, in 1816.
Tales, light verses, and farces were common examples of Bat-tala printing,
and Long recorded with disapproval that many of these dealt with erotic themes,
'equal to the worst of the French school' (Ghosh, 87). Long's
reservations not
withstanding, the Bat-tala trade was thoroughly indigenous, unmediated by
missionary or reformist values. Yet, it was not until the mid-century that the
Bat-tala trade assumed a truly commercial character. In 1857, Long hsted 46
presses in the area--along the Garanhata, Ahiritola, Chitpur, and Barabazar
roads--which printed a wide range of genres such as almanacs, mythological
literature, farces, songs, medical texts, and typographically distinct Muslim
Bengaliworks. This last category is particularly remarkable for the way in which
it retained someof the protocols of the MS book. In
fact, many Bat-tala produc
tions show a divided commitment to MS and printed forms of the
cially in the disposition of the title-page, whose paratextual excessbook, espe
signal some kind of confusion about proprietorship, authority, and seemed to
Although the production values of Bat-tala iterature often left entailment.
a lot to be
desired, there is no doubting the energy and vitality of its genres.
lications consciously distanced themselves from the moralizing and Bat-tala pub
agenda of print, and dealt unabashedly in subgenres such as erotica, reformist
current events, doggerel, andsongs. These proved so irksome to the scandals,
lobby that they pusthed for and, in 1856, reformist
succeeded in having an Act passed to
 TORY OF THE BO0K IN THE
INDIAN SU
prevent the publicsale or display of BCONTINENT
wards, Long reported with some obscene books and pictures. Shortly after
for selling an satisfaction that three people had been arrested
the book had obscene book of songs by D[arathi Roy, and
been sold at the price of four that 30,000 copies o
a fine of Rs. 1,300 annas. The
uponthe
tion censorship was in fact vendors, then a considerableSupreme
sum.
Court impO5ed
This
the
Some kind of restriction on first ofa number of official measures post-puhlica
to impose
the failed 1857 uprising by theprint--an initiative that would gain urgency
ar
the British Crown. Matters sepovsa,and the consequent takeover of India by
reached crisis with
translation of DinabandhuMitra's N-darpana (ThetheIndigo furore over the English
play fiercely critical of indigo planters. Following a Planting MiroT), a
successful libel action by the
planters, Long went tojail (for a month) for his role in facilitating
tion. It was therefore not surprising that the Indian Press and the transla
Books Act (1867) mandated that all publications in British IndiaRegistration of
be registered.
The Act was a watershed in the history of Indian printing and, in
hindsight, an
acknowledgement that print had truly become a part of everyday life in India.
4 The other presidencies: Bombay and Madras
Printing came to Goa in as early as 1556, but bypassed Bombay (now Mumbai),
fewer than 500 miles away. The Marathas of the Peshwa period did not seem
interested in printing, although there is some evidence that Bh)mji Prekh, a
Gujarati trader, set up a press in 1674. After this, there was a hiatus for more
than a century until1780, when Rustom Caresajee printed the Calendar for the
Year ofOur Lordfor 1780, a 34-page publication priced at two rupees.
In the last years of the century, the Courier Press was the most important in
Bombay. It printed the periodical The Bombay Courier, which was probably
started in 1791. An advertisement carried by it in 1797 is thought to be the first
in Gujarati characters: its type was cast by a press employee named Jijibhãi
Chhpghar. Robert Drumnmond, who wrote a Grammar of the Malabar Lan
guagein 1799 and for whom Jijibhäi also cast type, hailed him as an 'ingenious
artist who, without any other help or information than what he gleaned from
Chamber's Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, succeeded in completing a font of
the Guzzeratty types a few yearsago' (Priolkar, 73). The first Maratha characters
are likewise thought to haveappeared in an advertisement in the Bombay Cou
rier in July 1802. The first Gujarati pressproper was establishedin 1812 by Fer
dunjiMrzbn, who used to visit his friend Jijibhi at the Courier Press, and
was inspired by his example to start a printing office of his own. The first book
to be printed by Ferdunji's press was an almanac, in 1814.
As in Bengal, missionaries were quick to appear on on the scene. In 1813,
although they had been turned away from Calcutta, a group of Americans were
allowed by the governor, Sir Evan Nepean, to open amission in Bombay. Aprint
ing office was started in 1816 with a single wooden press and a single fount of
Marathi type, acquired in Calcutta, with which an eight-page scriptural tract
 HISTORY OF THE,
BOOK IN THEINDIAN
was produced in
1817.
until it employed a staffOver the next two SUBCONTINENT 565
in at least nine of 25. It had its decades, the press steadily grew in
own size
languages, a bindery, and typefoundry, which could
ingenuity of a youngapprentice, Thomas lithographic press. Thanks to the
a cast type
was able toproduce Graham, bythe
saw the beginning ofvastly improved Marathi and Gujaratimid-1830stype.
the press
Basle was primting Mangalore, on the west coast. A 1840s also
in The
its press in established
1843.
there in 1836; the first mission from
At the end of the third newspaper in Kannada.came from
and
power replaced the Peshwas in decisive Anglo-Maratha
War in 1818, British
Bombay Education Maharashtra. The new regime established
Society, whose task was to produce vernacular the
With the help ofa group of shastris, pandits, and textbooks.
ety produced the first Marathi munshis (teachers) the soci
dictionary
1ty of Marathi type was a recurring (Shabdakosh) in 1824. The availabil
printing unit was inaugurated with sixproblem,
so a govermment lithograpnlc
machines. Printing by lithography was
considerably aided by the discovery in 1826 that the Kurnool stone was particu
larly suitable for lithographic use.For aperiod, lithography was
preferred over
typographical printing in government circles, principally owing to the large size
and crude contours of the available type. As far as private initiatives were con
cerned, the Parsi trading community took the leadin setting up printing presses.
Consequently, a commercial print culture in western India first developed in
Gujarati, rather than in Marathi. Veena Naregal has suggested that the slow
growth of a Marathiprint culture was largely due to high-caste repugnance
towards the manual labour associated with the print trade.
In the mid-19h century, two men changed the face of Marathi printing. In
1840, Ganpat Krsn·jt built a wooden hand press and started experimenting
with ink-making and type design. In order to print the Hindu almanacs that
were his stock-in-trade, he designed and cast improved type in both Marathi
and Gujarati. Until Bhau Mahjan established his press in 1843, Krsnrs press
was the sole producer of Marathibooks outside government and missionary
circles. His pioneering efforts to publish sacred and "popular precolonial texts
illustrated many trends that were to characterise the emerging sphere of ver
nacular production' (Naregal, 185). Bhau Mahjan's Prabhakar Press printed
progressive periodicals such as the Prabhakar and the Dhumketu. The task of
typographical reform, on the other hand, was caried on by Jvji Ddaji, who
had started his career by working at the American Mission Press, and later
joined the stafof theIndu-Prakash Press. In 1864 he opened asmall typefoun
dry,and he established the Nirnaya-Sagara Press in 1869. Along with his friend
Ranoj+ Rãoj+ Aru, he set a very high standard for Marathi, Gujarati, and San
skrit typography.
In keeping with the two other presidencies, Madras became the undisputed
centre of 19th-century print culture, although mention must also be made of
Maharaja SerfojiII of Tanjore. In his palace in 1805, he set upapress that pro
duced eight books in Marathi and Sanskrit. But it was in Madras that a 'nexus
 K66 HISTORY OF THE BOOK IN
THE INDIAN
SUBCONTINENT
between pundits, printing and public patronage was
lishment of the College of Fort St George in 1812' cemented74).
with the estab
lowed by (Blackburn, This was fol
the establishment of the Madras School Book
for students in missionary-run schools. The Society in 1820, to cater
SPCK's Vepery Press continued to
be active: along with the Madras Male Asylum Press
(established in
accounted for a major share of periodical printing, At the suggestion1789),
it
of the
Vepery Press, the government decided to train local goldsmiths in cutting type.
This resulted in the creation of the first Telugu type in India. However, advances
in Telugu printing were hampered by confusion over competing renderings: the
Telugu used by missionaries, for example, was amishmash of dialects and styles,
to which Hindu scholarspaid no attention. This confusion delayed the advent
of print in the language by almost halfa century.
The founding of the College of Fort St George in 1812 marked the entry of the
pundits into the world of printing, and initiated afascinating encounter betwen
the worlds of print and MS. The publishing history of the Tamilepic Tirukkurl
in 1812, for instance, shows how the MS book's editorial and textual protocols
were being exploited to arrive at an authentic version for print. With the pun
dits drafted into teaching at the college, in its first two decades the press pro
duced 27 books, mostly in Tamil and Telugu. More importantly, teachers
acquired a familiarity with print that would later be employed in a radical
reshaping of literary culture. From the third decade of the century, a number of
pundit-presses' began to appear, such as the Kalvi Vilakkam, founded by
the Aiyar brothers in 1834, Tiru Venkatacala Mutliyr's Sarasvati Press, and
the Vidya-anubalana-yantra-sala or the Preservation of Knowledge Press of the
famous Jaffna Tamilscholar Arumaka Nvalar, a remnant of which still exists.
Many ofthesepresses played an important role in shaping public opinion, espe
cially during the anti-missionary campaigns of the 1840s. Another important
development of the period was the rise of journalism in several languages
European and Indian-representing almost all shades of political and social
opinion. By the middle of thecentury, printing in Tamil had encompassed almost
all major genres, and a standardized orthography was more or less in place. In
1862, the Revd Miron Winslow of the American Mission Press published his
landmark Tamil-English dictionary; three years later, the missionary John Mur
doch produced the first bibliography of Tamil printed books. The founts for the
dictionary, cut by P. R. Hunt, were a high water mark of Tamil typography.

5 Printing in north India

When printing began to spread westward in the first third of the 19h century, it
took the lithographic rather than the typographic route. Lithography was par
ticularly suitable for printing in Urdu and Persian, as it was an inexpensive
technology, and reproduced the elegant hand of calligraphers, who in turn
found cheap employment (Orsini, Detective Novels, 437). The problems asso
ciated with the development of Indian types could be bypassed through the new
 HISTORY OF THE BO0K IN THE
INDIAN
SUBcONTINENT 567
technology of ]lithography, and by
eprincipal centres of lithographicmid-century, Lucknow and Kanpur became
printing
That is not to say that there was no in all of South Asia.
in Devanagari(the script in which Hindi typography in Hindi publishing. Printing
and many Indian languages is written)
dates back tothe 17h century, but its
appearances were sporadic until the Ser
ampore missionaries began to use Devanagari type to print in a large range of
north Indian languages and dialects. Of the 2,120,000
press in its first three decades, as many as 65,000 werevolumes issued from the
printed in Devanagar1.
There was a good deal ofprinting in Devanagari at Bombay
in Marathi and Sanskrit. In Europe too, the rise of Indian as well, but primarily
studies led to the cast
ing of high-quality Devanagari founts, especially in Germany, where Schlegel
and Bopp produced editions of the Bhagavadgitãand the Hitopade[a in the
1820s. Thanks to the refinements in Devanagari, printers in Calcutta and
Benares (Varanasi) were able print books in the Nepali language as well.
Printing came to Lucknow in 1817 when the Matba-i Sultani, or Royal Press,
was established; but printing did not begin in earnest until the coming of lithog
raphy in 1830. That year, Henry Archer, superintendent of the Asiatic Litho
graphic Company in Kanpur, was invited to set up a press in Lucknow. In the
beginning, the trade was not commercial, in the sense that books were usually
published toan author's or a patron's order. Nevertheless, a score or so of litho
graphic presses were operating in the city by the 1840s, chief among which was
Mu_tafáKhn's Mustafai Press, which published expensive books as well as
popular genres such as masnavis and qissas. The quissas-moral tales, short
anecdotes, fableswere first published at Fort William College in Calcutta for
pedagogical purposes, but soon became a staple of commercial publishing in
Persian and Urdu. A particularly popular title was the Tuti nkm (Tales of a
Parrot) of which at least fifteen different editions appeared in Calcutta, Bom
bay, Madras, Kanpur, Lucknow, and Delhi between 1804 and 1883.
Largely owing to the activities of schoolbook societies and missionaries,
printing also spread to nearby towns and cantonments such as Agra, Allahabad,
Meerut, and Lahore. A schoolbook society for the North-Western Provinces,
with its headquarters at Agra, was set up in 1838. The same year saw the estab
lishment of a missionary schoolbook society in Benares. Two major blows were
subsequently dealt toprinting at Lucknow, however. In 1849 the Nawab Wajid
Ali Shah imposed a temporary ban on printing, as a result of which many firms
shifted to Kanpur. Thiswas followed by the sepoy uprising in 1857, leading to
further uncertainty in the trade. The one beneficiary of this state of afairs was
Nawal Kishore Bhargava of Agra, who in 1858 set up the Nawal Kishore Press at
Lucknow, in a field virtually devoid of competition. Munshi Nawal Kishore had
started his career as an Urdu journalist and had learnt presswork while
employed at the Kohinoor Press of Lahore. In Lucknow, he started by printing
in Urdu, but soon became the pioneer of Hindi printing in the city.
More
crucially, enjoyed English patronage, which meant that the Press received
he
the lion's share of government custom,especially extremely lucrative textbook
 HISTORY O)F THR ROOK
IN T'HR
INDIAN SURCONTIN ENT
cOntracts.In the
in printings of 1860s the Press issued cheapeditions of famous
several Hindi classics,
Sanskrit scriptures, andthousands at a time, followed by
Hindi
bilingual editions of Sanskrit texts withtranslations of
mentary. Another important centre of printing in Hindi was Hindi com
a fully fledged print Benares,
largely brought aboutculture would develop there only in the 1870s. Thisalthough
bythe efforts ofthe
remarkable was
who wote and published in Bhäratendu
every possible literary genre in Hari[candra,
extremely productive life. His his short ul
Varm, whose Bharat Jiwan Presslead was followed by the likes of
(established in 1884) specialized inRämakcsna
poetry, as well as translations of Bengali novels: the latter paved the
Brajbhasa
the explosion in fiction writing that took place in away tor
Pandits, 120). Benares in the 1890s' (Orsin1,

6 Print and the nation

By the turn of the century, print had spread to almost every part of the Indian
Subcontinent, with an elaborate network of production and distribution in
place. The rise of public libraries and reading rooms created new spaces for the
consumption ofprint. The Calcutta Public Library (established in 1836) showed
the way, by involving its subseribers, both Indian and British, in decision-mak
ng, especially with regard to acquisitions. The gradual increase in literacy and
the formation of new interpretative communities created new tastes and read
ing habits, as embodied most visibly in the phenomenal rise of the Indian novel.
The pioneer in this regard was the Bengali author Bankimcandra Cattopdhyy,
who is credited with having written the first novel in an Indian language, in
1865. The rise of this genre was perhaps the most decisive indication of the
extent to which print had penetrated and modified the literary protocols of
Indian languages.
The potentially large Indian market now began to attract overseas publish
ers. The two houses that took the lead in this initiative were Macmillan and
Oxford University Press. The rapid spread of education made the textbook mar
ket in India highly lucrative, and Macmillan entered it with a splash, taking
over Peary Churn Sircar'sBooks of Reading in 1875 from the firm of Spink, &
Co. Macmillan published F. T. Palgrave's famous Golden Treasury, and the alge
braand geometry of Hall and Knight, and Hall and Stevens, which are still in
use.In 1886, the firm ventured into fiction, with Macmillan's Colonial Library
and Macmillan's English Classics' for Indian Universities. OUP took a
more
scholarly route, by publishing the monumental 50-volume Sacred Books of the
East (edited by F. Max Müller), as well as the Rulers of India' series,
set up an Indian branch office only in 1912,in Bombay, under E. V. Rieu.although it
Other
British firms following their lead included Longman and Blackie &Son, the
ter publishing the ubiquitousWren and Martin lat
bution, A. H.Wheeler & Co.obtained the franchise Grammar. In the field of distri
for bookselling at railway
stations allover India, and became an essential part of Indian
travelling experi
 OP THE
BOOK IN THE
Another INDIAN SèB
ence.
started as the booksellingBookgiant was
Wesleyan Higgi nbotharns CONTNEVTS
Depot 1844 and is Bookstore of Madras, it
in
viving
bookshop.
P), a chain of The Oxford Book and Currernty India's oldest suT-
opened bookshops run by Stationery Company
the Primlanis, set (not cmneeted to
operate. bookshops in Calcutta, Bombay, and up business iT 1920 andto
By the Allahabad which (COTtinUe
beginning of the 20h
publicsphere and thoroughly century, print had becorne arn integral part of
and modern
knowledge systemsindigenous.
was
Thecompetition between
now firmlyenacted in the traditional
the
There was an enthusiastic arena of prnt
language literatures, involvingcollaboration between print andthe rise
ranath Tlagore, Fakirmohan Senpati, figures such as Subramaniya Bhrati,of regjonal
the freedom movement and Muns+ Premcãnd. The Raind
be called print during this period also saw the beginn1ng5
emergence what my
of
0
nationalism. Print,
mobilized in the task of articulatingespecially in the periodical press, was
wideiy
about the evilsof colonial rule. The the idea of a
nation, and focusing opiion
proposed
the swadeshi movement in its wake, saw partition of Bengal in 1905, and
provided by men ofletters such as Tagoreextensive use of print, with leadership
and periodicals such as the Jugntar.
Not surprisingly, the hand of the Raj began to come down heavily upon
'seditious' literature,and books were often proscribed and withdrawn so-called
from cir
culation. Raids on bookshops, the interrogation of suspects, and the arrest of
authors, publishers, and printers became common. In 1907, Gane[ De[mukh
was sentenced to seven years' transportation for distributing a seditious song
book, while the minstrel poet Mukundads was jailed for three years for per
forming a jatra, or musical drama, critical of the Raj. There were attempts at
circumvention, however. After the passage in 1910 of the Indian Press Act,
which aimed to prevent the publication and dissemination of seditious litera
ture in all forms, nationalist literature was often circulated via princely states
and non-British foreign enclaves such as PondicherTy and Chandannagar.
Returning Indian and European sailors provided another conduit for overseas
revolutionary literature. The civil disobedience movement brought in its wake
the repressive 1931 Indian Press Act, which sought to prevent the distribution
of material considered an incitement to violence.
The new century alsosaw the rise of a numnber of firms that took the lead in
standardizing publishing, and bringing it more into line with international
practice. The first attempts to form trade associations took place during this
time, notably in the College Street book mart in Calcutta. The
passing of the
Indian Copyright Act of 1914 ratified the 1911 British Act with minor
and helped clarify author-publisher relations. Another changes,
wasthe rise of specialist publishers, leading to the notable development
and scholarly practices, a task initiated by learned standardization of editorial
Pracharini Sabha of Kasi and the Bang+ya Sahityasocieties such as the Nagari
Tagore set up the publishing arm of his world Pari_at in Calcutta. When
becameone of the first publishing houses in Indiauniversity, Visva-Bharati,
to adopt uniform editorial
it
 570 HISTORY OF THE BOOR IN THE
INDIAN
onventions. A similar role
was SURCONTINENT
played by the South India Saiva
Works Publishing Society in Madras.
Siddhanta
7
The first two decades after
Publishing after 1947
young firns. Many of them Independence saw the coming of age of a
had been loosely associated number ot
ment, such as Hind Kitab and with the freedom move
works of the revolutionary M. N.Renaissamce
Roy.
Publishers, set up to publish the
But
lishing House of Bombay, founded in 1943 by the field was dominated by Asia Pub-
regarded as the first Indian publishing house to bePeter Jayasinghe, and waey
organized
SiOnal lines. Over a period offour decades it published nearly along
5,000
truly prores
titles,
in the social sciences and politics, and in its hevday was able to mostiy
maintain braneu
offices in London and New York. Nevertheless, it may have overreached itselt, ror
1s declhne in the 1980s was sharp and sudden. Another publisher of serious
books was Popular Prakashan, which was started as abookshop in 1924 but soon
went into publishing, and which distinguished itself byissuing the seminal works
of the historian D. D. Kosambi in the 1950Os. In fact, many firms that had begun
life as booksellers and distibutors branched out into publishing after Independ
ence, making intelligent use of their networks. Such was the case with Rupa 8&
wholesalers, dis
Co., which was founded in 1936 and became one of the largest
publishing. Allied, estab
tributors, and exporters in India before diversifying into
publishing.
lished in 1934,took the same route and went into textbook Books, founded in 1946
way: Jaico
Inthe paperback sector, two firms led the publisher of paperbacks in Eng
in anticipation of Independence,was the firstD. N. Malhotra, began the paper
lish. Hind Pocket Books, started in 1958 by
It published fiction and non-fiction
back revolution by printing ten Hindi titles.started two book clubs, one for books
Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and English, and
in most energetic publisher of the
in Hindi and one in English. But perhaps the
House (established in 1969), which
period was a late entrant, Vikas Publishing 500 titles every year. A
published in a wide range of subjects, at an average of
factor in the firm's success was the access it had to its sister concern, the
key networks in the
distribution
UBSPD, which had one of the most sophisticated
by the Sahitya Pravar
country. Alternative models of publishing were providedMalayalam authors, and P.
thaka Cooperative Society, set up as a cooperative for over 3,000 young
Lal's Writers Workshop in Calcutta, which has published
English-language authors since 1958.
Alarge part of the publishing market was accounted
for by the government
Sahitya Akademi as a
and its subsidiaries.In 1954 the government founded the
Indian lan
national academy of letters, with the mandate of publishing in since pub
has
guages, both in the original and in translations. The Akademi
lished several thousand titles, but its distribution network is practicaly
nonexistent. The National Book Trust was established in 1957 to provide books
field, steadily
at cheap prices. Amnong overseas publishers, OUP India led the
 HISTORY OF THE BOOK IN THE
INDIAN
consolidating its
Longman(the position, while others such as SUBCONTINENT 57
nesses
post
following -Independence avatar of Macmillan,
Longman) Blackie, and Orient
restrictions
fected because it is a
on foreign firms' holding
closed their Indian busi-
co1porate taxes 1n manydepartment of the
University and
equity. OUP was unaf-
countries. Currently, it is enjoys exemption from
oholarly andreference books, with alist of morethanIndia's leading publisher of
the United States' 3.000 titles. In the
cancollege-level PL480 programmeresulted in more than a 1960s,
four million bookstextbooks being registered in India at thousand Ameri
were
were late to enter the fielddistributed through subsidized
this route. Americanprices. Some
books. Prentice Hall set upand when they did so. it was with publishers
higher-level text
market in collaboration withbusiness in 1963. while MeGraw-Hill entered the
This was roughly the state oftheTata family in 197o.
the publishing business until
tion was set in motion in the early 1990s.
Penguin
economic liberaliza
India
1987, and currently publishes 200 titles annually, with a started publishing from
ing it one of the biggest publishers of English books in backlist of 750 titles, mak
South Asia. Macmillan
returned to India after a period of absence, and has tried to reclaim the promi
nence it once enjoyed in educational publishing. The loosening of import
equity restrictions led to the entry in recent years of conglomerates suchand as
HarperCollins, Random House, and the Pearson Group: HarperCollins was the
first out of thestarting gate, and has recently allied with the India Today group. All
this portends an imminent boom in publishing in India, and one not merely
restricted to the English language. Penguin has plans to enter into regional
language publishing, a market whose full potential is far from being tapped. India
is alsoin the process of becoming the back office for overseas publications,with
increasing volumes of editorial and production work being outsourced to it.
According to the Federation of ndian Publishers, there are more than
I1,000 publishing firms in India, some four-fifths of which are publishing in
regional languages. Unfortunately, most of them seem unable to break out of
their outdated business models. There are some exceptions, of course, such as
Ananda, which is the leading publisher of Bengali books, and belongs to the
group of companies that includes Anandabazar Patrika, the first Bengali daily
tohave used Linotype. In contrast, English-language and bilingual publishing
has seen theentry of anumber of independent niche firms, which have brought
creativity and energy to publishing. Tara in Madras publishes for the neglected
young adult sector, while Kali for Women and Stree have distinguished them
selves in women's studies. Permanent Black has set a high standard for schol
arly publishing; Seagull is noted for the quality of its theatre and arts books,
and Roli publishesexpensive art books for an overseas market. Translation is
another sector that is beginning to register growth after decades of inexplica
ble neglect. Thus, with an expanding population, solid businesses, overseas
and domestic investment, and a degree of commercial innovation, the future of
Indian publishing seems highly promising.
 572 |
HISTORY OF TH. HOOK IN
TR IN)AN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
P.
C. Altbach, Prublishing in Intiu (1975)
s.
Bandyopdhyy,
mudrano praksn ed., Dui sataker
(1981) hingla
Blackbun,
ism in Print, Folklore, and
National 1990 (2007)
and V.Colonial South
Dalmia,es., India (2003)
tory (2004) India's Literary
G. Bühler, Indian
1987) Paleography (1904; repr.
[Calcutta School-Book Society,] The Fif
teenth Report ofthe
Proceedings of the Cal
cutta School Book Society
R. B. Chatterjee, 'A Short (1852)
Account of the
Company's Trade with the Subcontinent,
in Macmillan: A Publishing
Tradition,
1843-1970,ed. E. James (2001)
Empires ofthe Mind:A
History ofOaford
University Press in India Under the Raj
(2006)
R. B. Darnton, Literary Surveillance in the
British Raj: The Contradictions of Liberal
Imperialism, BH 4 (2001), 133-76
S. K. Das, Sahibs and Munshis: An Account
of the College ofFort William (1978)
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