Manuscripts in the Schools 

• 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

Advent of Print to India 

• •First came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-16th century.

• •Jesuit priests learnt Konkani and printed several tracts.

• •By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in the Konkani and in Kanara languages.

• •Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin, and in 1713 the first Malayalam book was printed by them.

• •By 1710, Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts, many of them translations of older works

Newspapers and Journals 

• •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’.

• •So it was private English enterprise, proud of its independence from colonial influence, that began English printing in India.

• •Hickey published a lot of advertisements, including those that related to the import and sale of slaves. But he also published a lot of gossip about the Company’s senior officials in India.

• •The first Indian Newspaper that appear was the weekly Bengal Gazette, brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya, who was close to Rammohun Roy