Chapter - 5
" Print Culture and the Modern World "
🔹 The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan and Korea.
🔹 In China, books were printed by rubbing paper against the inked surface of woodblocks.
❇️ First Printed Books :-
✴️ Print in China :-
🔹 In the 17th Century, the use of print diversified in China because of booming urban culture.
✴️ Print In Japan :-
🔹 Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand printing technology into Japan .
🔹 The oldest Japanese book printed is the Buddhist 'Diamond Sutra'.
✴️ The First Printed Books :-
🔹 The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan and Korea. This was a system of hand printing.
🔹 Books in China were printed by rubbing paper against the inked surface of woodblocks.
🔹 As both sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional Chinese 'accordion book' was folded and stitched at the side.
🔹 Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy, the beauty of calligraphy.
🔹 Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology into Japan around AD 768-770.
🔹 The oldest Japanese book, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations.
🔹 In the late 18th century, at Edo (Tokyo), collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban culture, involving artists, courtesans, and teahouse gatherings became popular.
🔹 Libraries and bookstores were packed with hand-printed material- books on women, musical instruments, calculations, tea ceremony, flower arrangements, cooking, famous places, etc.
❇️ Print Comes to Europe :-
🔹 In 1295, Marco Polo, returned to Italy after many years of exploration in China and introduced wood block printing.
🔹 Italians began producing books with woodblocks, and soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe.
🔹 Luxury editions were handwritten on very expensive vellum, meant for aristocratic circles and rich monastic libraries.
🔹 Merchants and students in the university towns bought the cheaper printed copies.
🔹 As the demand for books increased, booksellers all over Europe began exporting books to many different countries. Book fairs were held different places.
🔹 Booksellers hired skilled hand writers to produce manuscripts. But the production of handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy the increasing demand for books.
🔹 Woodblock printing became more and more popular. Woodblocks were being widely used in Europe to print textiles, playing cards, and religious pictures with simple, brief texts.
❇️ Gutenberg and the Printing Press :-
🔹 Johann Gutenberg developed the printing press in the 1430s in Strasbourg, Germany.
🔹 The first book he printed was the Bible. About 180 copies were printed in 3 years.
🔹 He was a skilled goldsmith who created the moulds for the letters of alphabet.
Chapter - 5
" Print Culture and the Modern World "
🔹 Printed books at first resembled the written manuscripts in appearance and layout.
🔹 Borders were illuminated by hand. In the books printed for the rich, space for decoration was kept blank on the printed page.
❇️ Increase in Demand for Book :-
👉 Demand for Books increased because
🔹 Book fairs were held at different places.
🔹 Production of handwritten manuscripts was also organised in New ways to meet the expanded demand.
🔹 Scribes or Skilled hand writers were no longer solely employed by wealthy or influential patrons but increasingly by booksellers.
❇️ The Print Revolution and Its Impact :-
✴️ A New Reading Public :-
🔹 Earlier knowledge was transferred orally. People collectively heard a story, or saw a performance.
🔹 With the printing press, a new reading public emerged. Books flooded the market, newa reading public came into being.
🔹 Books could be read only by the literate, and the rates of literacy in most European countries were very low.
🔹 Printers began publishing popular ballads and folk tales, illustrated with pictures. These were then sung and recited at gatherings in villages and in taverns in towns.
✴️ Religious Debates and the fear of Print :-
🔹 Not everyone welcomed the printed book, and those who did also had fears about it.
🔹 It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read then rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread.
🔹 In 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote Ninety Five Theses criticizing many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church.
🔹 This lead to a division within the Church and to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
🔹 Deeply grateful to print, Luther said, 'Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.
❇️ The Reading Mania :-
🔹 As literacy and schools spread in European countries, there was a reading mania. People wanted books to read and printers produced books in increasing numbers.
🔹 Booksellers employed pedlars who roamed around villages, carrying little books for sale.
🔹 In England, penny chapbooks were carried by petty pedlars known as chapmen, and sold for a penny, so that even the poor could buy them.
🔹 In France, were the "Biliotheque Bleue" which were low-priced small books printed on poor quality paper, and bound in cheap blue covers.
🔹 Newspapers and journals carried information about wars and trade, as well as news of developments in other places.
🔹 The ideas of scientists and philosophers now became more accessible to the common people.
🔹 Ancient and medieval scientific texts were compiled and published, and maps and scientific diagrams were widely printed.
🔹 When scientists like Isaac Newton began to publish their discoveries, they could influence scientifically minded readers.
🔹 The writings of thinkers such as Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau were also widely printed and read.
❇️ Print Culture and the French Revolution :-
🔹 Print popularized the ideas of enlightened thinkers, the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely.
🔹 They made a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism. It opened the eyes of the readers, made them question, be critical and rational.
🔹 Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate. All values, norms and institutions were revalued and discussed by a public that had become aware of the power of reason. New ideas of social revolution into being.
🔹 By the 1780s, there was literature, that mocked royalty and criticized their morality. In the process, it raised questions about the existing social order. It led to hostile sentiments against the monarchy.
❇️ Children, Women and Workers
✴️ Children :-
🔹 As primary education became compulsory in late 19th century, children became an important category of readers. Therefore, Production of textbooks became important for publishing industry.
🔹 A children's press, for producing only children's books, was set up in France in 1857. The press published fairytales and folktales.
🔹 Grimm Brothers of Germany collected many stories from villages and edited them, before publishing them in 1812. Anything unsuitable for children was not published.
✴️ Women :-
🔹 Women became not only important readers but writers also. Special magazines were printed for women which catered to their tastes.
🔹 Penny magazines were especially meant for women, as were manuals teaching proper behaviour and housekeeping.
🔹 Women became readers of novels and some of the best novelists of this period were women Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and George Eliot.
🔹 They portrayed a different woman – strong, independent, determined, and able to think.
✴️ Worker :-
🔹 The white collar workers, artisans and lower middle-class people educated themselves with the help of lending libraries.
🔹 Working day was gradually shortened from the mid-nineteenth century, workers had some time for self-improvement and self-expression.
🔹 They not only read but started writing also - mostly political pamphlets and autobiographies.
❇️ Further Innovations :-
🔹 Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected the power- driven cylindrical press. This was capable of printing 8,000 sheets per hour. This press was particularly useful for printing newspapers.
🔹 Later offset press was developed which could print up to six colours at a time. From the turn of the twentieth century, electrically operated presses accelerated printing operations.
🔹 Methods of feeding paper improved, the quality of plates became better, automatic paper reels and photoelectric controls of the colour register were introduced.
❇️ Print Comes to India :-
🔹 The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century.
🔹 English East India Company began to import presses from the late seventeenth century.
🔹 From 1780, James Augustus Hickey began to edit the Bengal Gazette, a weekly magazine that described itself as 'a commercial paper open to all, but influenced by none'.
🔹 Hickey published a lot of advertisements, related to the import and sale of slaves and also published a lot of gossip about the Company's senior officials in India.
🔹 There were Indians, too, who began to publish Indian newspapers. The first to appear was the weekly Bengal Gazette, brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya.
❇️ Religious Reform and Public Debates :-
🔹 In early 19th century print created the platform of new religious debate among scholars. 🔹 This was a time of intense controversies between social and religious reformers and the Hindu orthodoxy over matters like widow immolation, monotheism, Brahmanical priesthood and idolatry.🔹 To reach a wider audience, the ideas were printed in the everyday, spoken language of ordinary people. 🔹 Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821 and the Hindu orthodoxy commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions.🔹 In north India, the ulama were worried about the collapse of Muslim dynasties. They feared that colonial rulers would encourage conversion, change the Muslim personal laws.🔹 They published Persian and Urdu translations of holy scriptures, and printed religious newspapers and tracts. 🔹 The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published thousands of fatwas telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves in their everyday lives, and explaining the meanings of Islamic doctrines. 🔹 Urdu print helped Muslim sects and seminaries in countering the influence of its opponents.🔹 Among Hindus, print encouraged the reading of religious texts, The first printed edition of the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, sixteenth-century text, came out from Calcutta in 1810.🔹 The Naval Kishore Press at Lucknow and the Shri Venkateshwara Press in Bombay published numerous religious texts in vernaculars. In their printed and portable form, these could be read easily at any place and time. They could also be read out to large groups of illiterate men and women.
❇️ Women and Print :-
🔹 The status of women improved in the Indian society. Women's reading, increased in middle-class homes. 🔹 Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their womenfolk at home, and sent them to schools when women's schools were set up.🔹 Many journals began carrying writings by women, and explained why women should be educated. They also carried a syllabus and attached suitable reading matter, which could be used for home-based schooling.🔹 Printed books helped women to emerge as rebels. Many women began writing and tried to highlight the poor condition of women.
❇️ Women and Print In East Bengal :-
🔹 In East Bengal Rashsundari Debi, wrote her autobiography Amar Jiban (1876). It was the first autobiography published in the Bengali language.
🔹 Kailashbashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women - about how women were imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance, forced to do hard domestic labour.
❇️ Women and Print In East Maharashtra :-
🔹 In Maharashtra, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women, especially widows.
🔹 In the early 20th century. journals, written for and sometimes edited by women, became popular. They discussed issues Like women's education, widowhood, widow remarriage and the national movement.
❇️ Print and Poor people :-
🔹 From the late 19th century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written. Jyotiba Phule, the Maratha pioneer of 'low caste' protest movements, wrote about the injustices of the caste system in his Gulamgiri (1871).🔹 B.R.Ambedkar in Maharashtra and E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker in Madras, wrote powerfully on caste and their writings were read by people all over India. 🔹 Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal to show the links between caste and class exploitation. 🔹 The poems of another Kanpur millworker, who wrote under the name of Sudarshan Chakr published in a collection called Sacchi Kavitayan.
❇️ The Vernacular Press Act :-
🔹 In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed by the British Government to impose restrictions on vernacular press, which was responsible for spreading nationalist ideas. 🔹The government started to keep a regular track of the vernacular newspapers and had extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular press. 🔹When a report was judged as seditious, the newspaper was warned, and if the warning was ignored, the press was liable to be seized and the printing machinery confiscated.
❇️ Print and Censorship :-
🔹 In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed, modelled on the Irish Press Laws. 🔹 It provided the government with extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular press.🔹 When a report was judged as seditious, the newspaper was warned, and if the warning was ignored, the press was liable to be seized and the printing machinery confiscated.🔹 Despite repressive measures, nationalist newspapers grew in numbers in all parts of India. Balgangadhar Tilak wrote Kesari and encouraged nationalist activities.
❇️ Conclusion :-
🔹 It is difficult to imagine the world without printed matter.🔹 In fact, print shaped our contemporary world. social lives and cultures changed with the coming of Print.
❇️ Keypoints to remember :-
✴️ Platen :- In letter place printing, platen is board which is pressed onto the back of the paper to get the impression from the type.
✴️ Compositor :- The person who composes the text for printing. Galley : Metal frame in which types are laid and the text composed.
✴️ Ballad :- A historical account or folk tale in verse, usually sung or recited.
✴️ Inquisition :- A former Roman Catholic court for identifying and punishing heretics. Diamond Sutra was the first printed book of Japan which was published in 868 AD.
✴️ Despotism :- A system of government in which absolute power is exercised by an Individual, unregulated by legal and constitutional checks.
✴️ Ulama :- Legal Scholar of Islam and Sharia.
✴️ Fatwa :- A legal Pronouncement on Islamic law usually given by mufti to clarify issues on which the law is uncertain.
✴️ Almanac :- An annual publication giving astronomical data, information about the movements of the sun. In 1878, Vernacular Press Act was passed. It gave the government extensive 'right to censor reports and editorials in vernacular newspaper.
🔹 In East Bengal Rashsundari Debi, wrote her autobiography Amar Jiban (1876). It was the first autobiography published in the Bengali language.
