Serampore Mission Press

The Serampur Mission Press was a book and newspaper publisher that operated in Serampur, Danish India, from 1800 to 1837.

The Press was founded by William Carey, William Ward, and other British Baptist missionaries at the Serampur Mission. It began operations on 10 January 1800. The British government, highly suspicious of missionaries, discouraged missionary work in their Indian territories."(William Carey) worked in India despite the hostility of the British East India Company> However, since Serampore was under Danish rule, the missionaries and the Press were able to operate freely.

The press produced 212,000 books between 1800 and 1832. In August 1800, the press published a Bengali translation of the Gospel according to St Matthew. The press published religious Christian tracts, Indian literary works, translations of the Bible in twenty five Indian vernaculars and other South Asian languages. However, its major activity was the publication of vernacular Textbooks. The Press printed books on grammar, dictionaries, history, legends and moral tales for the Fort William College and the Calcutta School-Book Society. In 1818, the Press also published the first Bengali newspaper and magazine. It published books in almost forty five languages.

The press closed in 1837 when the Mission ran into heavy debts. According to essayist Nikhil Sarkar in "Printing and the Spirit of Calcutta", the Press merged with the Baptist Mission Press.

Gangakishore Bhattacharya, considered the first Bengali printer, began his career as a compositor at the press.

History

Printing in Bengal had started in Hoogly where the press of the bookseller Andrews used Bengali types. N. B. Halhed's ''A Grammar Of the Bengal Language'' was published from this press in 1778. Sir Charles Wilkins had mastered the art of cutting types and he also taught Panchanan Karmakar. The printing press was in the immediate charge of Ward, who left detailed accounts of its day-to-day running. Between 1800 and 1834, the press printed Bible translations in almost 50 languages, 38 of which were translated at Serampore by Carey and his associates. There were altogether 117 printings, of which 25 were in Bengali. The press supplied Bibles to almost all significant Baptist missions in the region, from Indonesia in the east to Afghanistan in the west. From a memoir of 1813, it may be seen that a Malay Bible in roman characters was in preparation, while a five-volume reprint of the entire Bible in Arabic was being undertaken for the lieutenant-governor of Java. The memoir of 1816 claims that a Chinese Pentateuch was in the press and that ‘the new moveable metal type, after many experiments, are a complete success’. The 1820 memoir records the printing of the New Testament in Pushtoo, and also the setting up of a paper factory.

William Carey arrived in Calcutta on 11 November 1793. His early attempts to set up a mission on the soil of British India failed, as the company was hostile towards missionary activity. Eventually, Carey was permitted to set up his mission in Danish-controlled Serampore—then known as Fredericksnagar—where he was joined by two other Baptists, William Ward and Joshua Marshman. In the meantime, Carey had acquired a wooden hand press, gifted by George Udny, the indigo planter who had supported Carey and his family. He wanted to print the New Testament in Bengali and therefore purchased ink, paper and Bengali fonts from the type cutting foundry of Panchanan Karmakar in Calcutta. Panchanan Karmakar, the goldsmith trained in type making by Wilkins, was ‘borrowed’ by Carey from Colebrooke and then put under virtual house arrest in Serampore. With the help of Panchanan and his son-in-law Manohar, a type foundry was set up in March 1800. In the first ten years of its life, the foundry produced type in at least thirteen languages. The press was set up in Mudnabatty where Carey had settled, but he could not begin the printing because he did not have an expert printer.

The then Governor-General of India, Lord Wellesley, did not object to any printing presses being set up outside British occupied land but was strictly against any in English territory. Rev. Mr. Brown was informed that Lord Wellesley would enforce censorship on any publication done on English territory outside Calcutta. The British government threatened to arrest missionaries who would trespass on the East India Company’s territory. The Danish Government of Serampore assured Ward that they would provide protection for the missionaries. In 1798 Carey suggested that the missionaries could establish the Mission's headquarters in Serampore.

In 1799 William Ward and Joshua Marshman came to Calcutta. In the face of rigid resistance from the Company, Ward and Carey decided to establish the Mission and printing press in Serampore. Carey's press and other printing paraphernalia were transported to Serampore. Ward was a printer and therefore work on the printing of the Bengali Bible was immediately started in March 1800. Ward also doubled up as the type setter during the early days. In spite of the high rents in Serampore, the missionaries were able to purchase a suitable premise.

To appease Lord Wellesley, Rev. Brown had to assure him of the purely evangelical intentions of the press since they had refused to publish a pamphlet that criticized the English government. Rev. Brown also convinced Wellesley that the Bengali Bible published by the press would be useful for the students of the about to be opened Fort William College. Thus began a fruitful and long association between the Serampore Press and the Fort William College.

William Carey was appointed as the professor of Sanskrit in the College and after that he published a number of books in Bengali from the press.

Infrastructure

The press initially started work with some fonts that Carey had purchased from Punchanon. In 1803 Carey decided to publish a Sanskrit Grammar in Dev Nagree type which required 700 separate punches. Carey therefore employed Punchanon and then an assistant Monohar. The two later established a type foundry in Serampore. Monohar created beautiful scripts of Bengali, Nagree, Persian and Arabic. Types were designed and cut for all the languages in which books were published. In fact, movable metal types for Chinese were also developed which were more economical than the traditional wooden block types.

In 1809 a treadmill that was run by a steam engine was set up in Serampore to produce paper.

Printing and publishing

The first published work of the Serampore Mission Press was the Bengali New Testament. On 18 March 1800, the first proof sheets of the translation were printed. In August, the gospel of Matthew was completed as Mangal Samachar. The bulk of publication consisted of Bibles, but even more significant than the Bibles were the Bengali translations of the two great epics ''Ramayana'' and ''Mahabharata''. These were published during 1802–3, and marked the first ever appearance of the epics in printed form, in any language. The press also published dictionaries, grammars, dialogues or colloquies, Sanskrit phrasebooks, philosophy, Hindu mythological tales, tracts, and the first ever newspaper in Bengali, the ''Samachar Durpun'' or the "Mirror of News". The first number of this biweekly, bilingual (Bengali and English) paper was published in May 1818. According to a calculation made by the missionaries themselves, a total of 212,000 items of print in 40 languages were issued by the press from 1800 to 1832. Along with the mission's own publications, the press also executed orders by Fort William College. During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the College played a crucial role in producing grammars and Lexicons in all the major Indian languages, a task carried out both by Indian and European scholars. Altogether 38 such works were produced in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Urdu

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases