Wednesday 21 July 2010

Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg



The New Testament printed at the Tranquebar Press in 1713

A digital version of Propagation of the Gospel in the East. Being an Account of the Success of two Danish Missionaries, Lately sent to the East-Indies, for the conversion of the Heathens in Malabar ... London: Downing, 1709, may be found here
http://192.124.243.55/digbib/gosp.htm

An early work on Madras, printed by Benjamin Schultze, may be found here
http://192.124.243.55/digbib/madras.htm

Saturday 26 June 2010

Bibliography

Anindita Ghosh, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture
Abhijit Gupta & Swapan Chakravorty, eds., Print Areas: Book History in India, and Moveable Type: Book History in India
Abhijit Gupta, 'The Book in South Asia', Oxford Companion to the Book, Vol. 1
A. K. Priolkar, The Printing Press in India
B. S. Kesavan, History of Printing and Publishing in India, 3 vols.
Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere 1920-1940. Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism, and Before the Divide: Hindu and Urdu Literary Culture
G. Buhler, Indian Paleography
G. Shaw, Printing in Calcutta to 1800
J. P. Losty, The Art of the Book in India
Priya Joshi, In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India
Rimi B. Chatterjee, Empires of the Mind: a History of Oxford University Press in India Under the Raj
Rochelle Pinto, Between Empires: Print and Politics in Goa
S. Blackburn, Print, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India
S. Blackburn, & V. Dalmia, eds., Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century
S. Pollock, The Language of Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture and Power in Premodern India
Veena Naregal, Language Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere
Ulrike Stark, An Empire of Books: The Naval Kishore Press and the Diffusion of the Printed Word in Colonial India

Thursday 24 June 2010

Course description and schedule





This course in intended to survey the evolution of the book in South Asia, from the manuscript to the digital form. Beginning with the Buddhist and the Jain books, the course will examine the rise of the Hindu book in the first millennium CE and the coming of the Islamic and Christian books in the second millennium. The history of the printed book will be covered extensively with special emphases on major centres of print culture such as Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, as well as other centres such as Goa, Tranquebar, Serampore, Colombo, Lucknow, Dacca, Lahore, Benares etc.


Week 1: The coming of the manuscript book—the material form of the pothi—the rise of Buddhism and Jainism—the coming of manuscript culture in Hinduism

Week 2: The Sanskrit cosmopolis; the vernacular revolution; the empowerment of regional courts; the coming of the Islamic book

Week 3: Illumination, calligraphy, binding: the book arts; sites of textual production; the socialization of the manuscript

Week 4: The coming of the Christian book: missionary initiative in Goa and Tranquebar

Week 5: the coming of the Company: early printing in the three Presidency cities: Calcutta, Bombay, Madras

Week 6: Serampore and the Baptist Mission Press

Week 7: Printing for Fort William College; the Calcutta School-Book Society

Week 8: Printing in Calcutta: from Battala to College Street; the importance of being Ishwarchandra Bidyasagar

Week 9: The lithographic route; printing in the Hindi heartland; Benaras, Lucknow and the cantonment towns

Week 10: New centres of print: Dhaka, Lahore, Colombo; the north-east

Week 11: Surveillance and the Raj: from Nil Darpan to Mukunda Das

Week 12: Print nationalism

Week 13: Printing in English: the cases of OUP and Macmillan

Week 14: Publishing after independence