Print comes to India: manuscripts, missionaries, first newspapers

Detail

India before print: the manuscript world

• India had a very old and rich manuscript tradition. Manuscripts were hand-copied books.
• They were made in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and in vernacular languages (the everyday languages of a region — Bengali, Tamil, Hindi and others).
• Writing surfaces were palm leaves or handmade paper.
• Pages were often illustrated (hand-painted pictures). They were pressed between wooden covers or sewn together so they would last.
• Very important: manuscripts did not stop when print arrived. They continued to be produced till the late nineteenth century. Print and handwriting lived side by side for a long time.

Why manuscripts could not become everyday reading

Break the problem into four parts:

• Costly — each copy had to be written by hand, so only a few people could own one.
• Fragile — palm leaf and handmade paper tore easily and could not be carried around or handled daily.
• Hard to read — scribes wrote in many different styles of script, so a reader who knew one hand could struggle with another.
• Not for common use — so manuscripts could not be widely and easily read, even by people who could technically read.

The Bengal schoolroom puzzle: literate but not readers

• Pre-colonial Bengal had a large network of village primary schools (pathshalas).
• But teaching was mostly oral. Teachers dictated from memory; students wrote it down.
• Result: many students learnt only to write, not to read.
• So people could become literate without ever having read any kind of text. This is why NCERT says print culture, not just literacy, changed reading.

The press arrives: Portuguese missionaries in Goa

• The printing press came to India in the mid-sixteenth century with Portuguese missionaries, who landed at Goa.
• Jesuit missionaries imported the first printing presses to Goa in September 1556; they printed religious literature in Portuguese, Tamil and Konkani [2].
• The Jesuit mission in India had been set up earlier by St Francis Xavier, who reached Goa in 1542 and built a college in Goa for training priests — the institutional base that later ran the press [2].
• Jesuit priests learnt Konkani and printed tracts (short religious booklets) in it.
• By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in Konkani and in Kanara languages.

Tamil, Malayalam and the Protestant presses

• Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin.
• Catholic priests printed the first Malayalam book in 1713.
• Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts by 1710. Many of these were translations of existing works.
• Point for the exam: missionaries, not the colonial state, brought print to India, and they printed in Indian languages first — because they wanted to convert people, who had to be addressed in their own tongue.

Why the English press grew so late

• The English East India Company began importing presses from the late seventeenth century. Yet English printing was slow to take off.
• William Bolts put out a notice in 1768 in Calcutta saying he would start a press. Nothing came of it. He left India without printing a paper.
• Britannica notes the presses the Company brought in had little immediate effect — because of political instability, the strength of the existing handwriting (calligraphic) manuscript culture, and low demand for printed reading matter [2].
• So the first real English newspaper came not from the government but from private English enterprise.

Hickey's Bengal Gazette, 1780

• From 1780, James Augustus Hickey edited the weekly Bengal Gazette in Calcutta.
• Hickey described it as "a commercial paper open to all, but influenced by none".
• The first issue appeared on 29 January 1780, titled Hicky's Bengal Gazette; or, The Original Calcutta General Advertiser [2].
• Being private English enterprise, it was independent of colonial influence — this is how English printing in India really began.
• What it carried:
• Advertisements, including notices for the sale of slaves.

• Gossip about senior officials of the East India Company.

• The reaction:

• Governor-General Warren Hastings persecuted Hickey.

• Hastings encouraged the publication of officially sanctioned newspapers to block damaging reports about the Company and to build up the colonial image.

• Britannica adds the paper also attacked Elijah Impey, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, and that Hickey was imprisoned, his types seized, and the paper shut down in 1782 [2].

The first newspaper published by an Indian

• The first Indian-published newspaper was the weekly Bengal Gazette, brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya.
• Bhattacharya was close to Rammohun Roy.
• Note the name clash: there are two Bengal Gazettes — Hickey's (English, private English enterprise, from 1780) and Gangadhar Bhattacharya's (the first published by an Indian). Exams test this pair.

Note: NCERT dates the arrival of the press to Goa as "mid-sixteenth century"; Britannica gives the precise month, September 1556 [2]. No conflict — the external source only sharpens the NCERT date.

Prelims Hooks

• Press came to India with Portuguese missionaries at Goa, mid-sixteenth century — September 1556 per Britannica [2].
• First Tamil book — 1579, at Cochin, printed by Catholic priests.
• First Malayalam book — 1713, printed by Catholic priests.
• By 1710 — Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts.
• By 1674 — about 50 books printed in Konkani and Kanara languages.
• William Bolts, 1768, Calcutta — press notice that came to nothing.
• James Augustus Hickey, from 1780 — weekly Bengal Gazette; motto "open to all, but influenced by none"; first issue 29 January 1780 [2].
• Warren Hastings persecuted Hickey and promoted officially sanctioned newspapers.
• Hickey jailed, types seized, paper stopped in 1782 [2].
• Gangadhar Bhattacharya's weekly Bengal Gazette — first newspaper published by an Indian; he was close to Rammohun Roy.
• St Francis Xavier reached Goa in 1542 and founded the college for training priests there [2].
• Manuscripts continued to be produced in India till the late nineteenth century.

Mains Points

• Print did not arrive as a colonial state project; it arrived as a missionary project. Portuguese Jesuits at Goa, Catholic priests at Cochin and Dutch Protestants in the Tamil country all printed in Indian languages because conversion required speaking to people in their own tongue. The colonial English press lagged by more than two centuries — useful for arguing that the technology of print entered India through religion, and only later through commerce and the state.
• Manuscripts did not die when print came. They ran on till the late nineteenth century. This complicates any simple "print replaced handwriting" story — it was a long overlap, not a sudden break. Use this against technology-determinist arguments in GS-I.
• The Hickey–Hastings clash is the first episode of press-versus-state conflict in India. A private English paper printed gossip about Company officials; the Governor-General responded with persecution plus state-sponsored newspapers — that is, both repression and counter-propaganda. This is the seed of the later censorship story (Vernacular Press Act, 1878) and of the idea of a free press as a check on power.
• Literacy is not the same as reading. Bengal's village pathshalas produced students who could write but had read no text. So the real change print brought was not literacy but the availability of cheap, standard, readable texts — a point that links the pre-print section to the later rise of a reading public and nationalist print.