How a kidnapped prince, a portuguese missionary & a calligrapher helped introduce printing in Bengali. 
It starts around 1643 with a Bengali boy born into wealth in Bhushana, Jessore (Bangladesh), whose actual name has been lost to time. As the story goes when the boy was of 20, he was captured by Portuguese pirates to be sold as a slave in Arakan (Rakhine, Myanmar).
He was however rescued by a Christian missionary Manoel de Rosario. Fearing for his life and with nowhere to go the boy sought refuge in Christianity and was christened as Dom Antonio de Rosario.
When Dom Antonio came back to his village to preach the faith in 1666, he wrote a Bengali book in order to reach out to the local population more effectively. It was titled Brahman Roman Catholic Sambad, no records of that book getting published back then exists.
Almost a century later following in the footsteps of Dom Antonio, fellow missionary Manuel da Assumpção, came out with the first grammatical instructions for the Bengali Language.
The grammar was based on the model of Latin grammar and used Latin script for writing Bengali words. He also came out with a book titled “Crepar Xastrer Orth, Bhed” (কৃপার শাস্ত্রের অর্থ-ভেদ), which was published in Lisbon in 1743.
Since there was no Bengali typeface at the time, the book was printed in roman letters. This is believed to be the first printed book of Bengali prose.
Three decades later Father Andrews who had setup a printing press in Hughli, felt the need of a Bangla Type in order to print Nathaniel Brassey’s A Grammar of the Bengal Language. It was then he hired a man called Panchanan Karmakar who hailed from a line of calligraphers.
Karmakar together with the help of Sir Charles Wilkins, a founding member of the Asiatic Society, developed the Bangla type for printing.
Karmakar would go on to work with William Carey and help print the Bangla translation of the New Testament and would also go on to develop types for various languages like Hindi, Marathi, Telegu.
Source: banglapedia.org, getbengal.com, William Carey University.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
