Early Perso-Arabic Printing Technologies in India

The Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies
presents:

The Character of Print: Early Perso-Arabic Printing Technologies in India

Dr. Zahra Shah
University of Bristol

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Abstract:

This presentation explores the early history of lithographic printing in the Perso-Arabic script in India. It explores the complex politics that underpinned the production and circulation of texts using different technologies. It examines the impact of typography on lithographs and manuscript culture and suggests that a much deeper interest in printing existed among Indians at an early stage. The relatively late proliferation of the print industry in India needs to be better understood and cannot be explained by aesthetic preferences or a resistance to colonial knowledge regimes alone. This paper investigates some of the economic and political facts that need to be examined alongside social and aesthetic considerations.

Bio:

Zahra Shah is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Bristol, and researches early modern and early colonial South Asia.