India and the World of Print Let us see when printing began in India and how ideas and information were written before the age of print. . Manuscripts Before the Age of Print India had a very rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts – in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages. Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper.
Pages were sometimes beautifully illustrated. They would be either pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation. Manuscripts continued to be produced till well after the introduction of print, down to the late nineteenth century. Manuscripts, however, were highly expensive and fragile.
They had to be handled carefully, and they could not be read easily as the Fig. – Pages from the Diwan of Hafiz, . Hafiz was a fourteenth-century poet whose collected works are known as Diwan . Notice the beautiful calligraphy and the elaborate illustration and design.
Manuscripts like this continued to be produced for the rich even after the coming of the letterpress. Fig. – Pages from the Gita Govinda of Jayadeva, eighteenth century. This is a palm-leaf handwritten manuscript in accordion format.
Fig. – Pages from the Rigveda. Handwritten manuscripts continued to be produced in India till much after the coming of print. This manuscript was produced in the eighteenth century in the Malayalam script.
script was written in different styles. So manuscripts were not widely used in everyday life. Even though pre-colonial Bengal had developed an extensive network of village primary schools, students very often did not read texts. They only learnt to write.
Teachers dictated portions of texts from memory and students wrote them down. Many thus became literate without ever actually reading any kinds of texts. . Print Comes to India The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century.
Jesuit priests learnt Konkani and printed several tracts. By , about books had been printed in the Konkani and in Kanara languages. Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in at Cochin, and