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http://mutiny.wordpress.com/2007/04/13/earliest-printed-books-in-indian-languages/
Some interesting Goa links below... FN
Earliest printed books in Indian languages Posted by Guru under India
, History , Books
Here are a couple of blogposts listing the earliest known printed
books in different languages. I found the following entries for the
Indian languages.
Tamil. Thampiraan vaNakkam (Goa, India: Henrique Henriques, 1578).
Bengali. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, A Grammar of the Bengal Language
(Hugli, India, 1778).
Hindi. A Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language (Calcutta, India:
Chronicle Press, 1796).
Oriya. Mrtyuñjaya Bidyalankar, trans. [New Testament] (Shrirampur,
India: Serampore Mission Press, 1807).
Malayalam. [New Testament] (Bombay, India: Courier Press, 1811).
Assamese. William Carey, et al., trans. [New Testament] (Shrirampur,
India: Serampore Mission Press, 1813).
Telugu. Grammar of Telugu (Shrirampur, India: Serampore Mission Press, 1813).
As is clear, nearly after a century of the printing of the first
English book, we see a Tamil book being printed in Goa (while the
other Indian languages were printed nearly two centuries after Tamil).
This accidental blessing of the printing press in Goa, and the role of
missionaries in setting it up, as well as the Tamil connection is
discussed in a recent article by Babu K Verghese in the Hindu:
It was Christian missionaries, who wanted to produce the Bible in the
several languages of the country, who introduced printing and
publishing in India. In fact, we got the first printing press as a
happy accident: As early as 1542, Francis Xavier, a Spaniard, was
teaching the Bible in Tharangambadi (Tranquebar), Tamil Nadu. Also,
when the Viceroy of Goa, on behalf of King Joan III of Portugal,
opened schools for Indians, books had to be provided. Thus, pressure
was put on Portugal by Francis Xavier to dispatch printing presses to
India, Ethiopia and Japan. Meanwhile, the Emperor of Abyssinia
(Ethiopia) requested the king of Portugal to send a press along with
the missionaries. Thus the first batch of Jesuit missionaries left for
Ethiopia on March 29, 1556. En route, they arrived in Goa on September
6, 1556. But, while they were preparing to proceed to Ethiopia, news
reached them that the Ethiopian Emperor was not keen to receive the
missionaries. Thus, as luck would have it, the press stayed in Goa and
was set up at the College of St. Paul in Goa. Today, the huge arch of
the St. Paul's College gate, restored by the Archaeological Survey of
India, stands as a witness to this pioneering effort.
In this regard, I should also mention the Italian priest
Veeramamunivar, who compiled several dictionaries and composed
literary and grammatical works in Tamil in the early 1700s.
PS: Do not take the dates given above to be the final word on the
subject; the author of the posts agrees that some of the dates are
educated guesses. So, if you know that the dates are wrong, or if you
know of any other Indian language and the year of first printing in
the same, leave a note.
--
FN: Frederick Noronha
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