Hindu and other philosophical systems of knowledge began orally as hymns and stories in ancient India where communities transmitted these literatures generationally in Sanskrit through the spoken and learnt word. The Vedas (Veda meaning knowledge in Sanskrit) are the oldest surviving Sanskrit liturgical sources in ancient India. Older than 1,500 BCE, the Vedas are associated with no authors. Recited as chants in groups and learnt mnemonically, they center around ancient gods, values of life, and sacrificial rituals. ⁶ Though the Vedas sustained via rigorous and sophisticated oral transmissions, epic poems of religious nature like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were composed by poets (oldest versions date back to approximately 800 BCE) on palm leaves, and much later, onto paper in India in the pothi style. The Ramayana has been an integral part of ancient Indic traditions. Attributed to the sage Valmiki, the Ramayana tells the story of the distinguished Rama (an avatar of Hindu god Krishna) and his heroic tales of bravery and righteousness. These wonderfully crafted tales assimilated into lavishly designed manuscripts under the Mughal (and independent Rajput kingdom) rule in India and are available today in the form of translated texts in multiple languages in book and digital forms.

Several texts that originated in Rajasthan in India have survived due to an extensive system of copying. The Gita Govinda, composed by the poet Jayadeva in the twelfth century CE, talks about the beautiful love and continued loyalty of Krishna to companion Radha. The earliest surviving copies were written meticulously by hand on chemically treated palm leaf paper. In the seventeenth century, the Gita Govinda was transcribed in manuscript form by many independent artisans in Rajasthan with intelligent layouts, dynamic illustrations, and highly decorative elements.⁷

Illuminated Persian and Imperial Mughal Manuscripts

Continuing in the tradition of securing knowledge on wooden tablets and even ceramic-wares since the seventh century, manuscripts witnessed their golden age in Persia between fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.⁸ Composed of texts from epic Persian literatures and poetry (for instance The Shahnameh by Abul-Qasem Ferdowsi, 1,010 CE), histories of Persian lands, and Islamic sources, Persian manuscripts are deliciously illustrated with lively images of human figures, nature, and geometric forms. Colored with vegetable dyes and treated with chemicals for illumination and finish, artisans used these parchments and papers (sometimes imported from China) to make albums with marbled borders, intricate frames, and gold dusted surfaces.⁹

The Mughals elevated the local Indian form of book making from palm leaf pothi to parchment and paper manuscript album on an unprecedented level in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Learning from the neighbouring Persian artisans and imperial court atelier practices, Mughal artists created hundreds of folios within manuscripts and albums that served as unique and lively examples of storytelling, local knowledge preservation, and scrupulous craftsmanship. Captions in the marginalia of books are unique features of the South Asian book found in Mughal and Persian albums, pothis, and on the folios of Sanskrit vernacular texts. A fascinating example is seen in The Book of Sindbad (Kitabi-i-Hakim-i-Sindbad). Laura Weinstein explores the often-overlooked remarkable margins filled with information in this manuscript written in Persian and traced to the Sultanate of Golconda in Deccan in 1575. She writes,

“In sum, the marginalia in The Book of Sindbad proffers an evocative invitation. They ask us to sit down in Tipu Sultan’s library and to leaf through the manuscript with eyes made sensitive to local, political, royal and literary resonances from across a broad cultural spectrum”. ¹⁰

Sometimes readers of these manuscripts would add captions in the folios that may be incorrect. For example, in the manuscript that illustrates Sindbad kneeling in front of the king, one of the captions on folio 18V says, “Sindbad tells a story to the kind concerning strategies of ruling”.¹¹ Of this caption, Weinstein writes that characters in the Sindbad’s story and manuscript are storytellers and sages, yet the individual who inserted the caption is incorrect, because in this image, Sindbad is instead making a promise to undertake the prince’s education. Weinstein asserts that the speculative and “educated guessing” in the caption exists because readers of these manuscripts understood their cultural value within regional literature and hoped to create a sustainable impact. ¹²

Indian Paintings, British Photographic Albums, and Urdu Lithographs

By the early eighteenth century, the practice of manuscript making had already waned in the Mughal ateliers, many of which were shut down by British colonizers in the mid nineteenth century. As manuscript ateliers reduced in numbers, two important developments in the making of books occur between the mid-1800s and the time leading up to the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. These are the (a) albums of paintings of natural specimens made by expert Indian artists for the British and the (b) photographic albums made for the British imperial throne and Indian maharajas of the upper echelon. Here, traditional Indian brush encounters early modern pen, paint, and ink through the incoming East India company British officials and French businesspersons who appointed many Indian painters to create botanical and zoological paintings for their personal albums. The works are mostly paintings and drawings of birds, animals, plants species indigenous to India, and portraits of the country’s architecture and people. There was a high interest in documentation of Indian species; French businessman and indigo planter Claude Martin imported 17,000 sheets of European watercolour paper and paints and commissioned many artists from Lucknow to archive natural history specimens. ¹³ While the British renounced traditional Indian methods in favour of Western modern painting styles, these albums combine centuries worth of traditional dexterity of Indian court painters with machine-produced materials, thus resulting in wonderful scientific and artistic artworks.

Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom never travelled to India herself, however, she was highly invested in establishing her imperial sovereignty over the subcontinent. A monochrome photograph in The Victoria Photographic General album, shows a resolute looking Queen Victoria, seated on her royal throne in a profile view, while distributed around her picture are smaller portraits of Indian officers. The album was made by the lesser known “Poona Photographic Company” and sold copies to high-ranking Indian officials. Photography became popular in India in the mid-1800s. ¹⁴ Many maharajas took up the skill themselves or hired photographers to archive their lives and family portraits.¹⁵ Considered art, photographic albums like the ones done by “Poona Photographic Company” illustrate the connections between imperialists and their subjects, relationships between Indian and British photographic practices, technology, and new notions behind books and art making.

Lithographs are a widespread method of printmaking employing designs embossed on flat stones or metallic surfaces and copied off by means of chemicals. Urdu lithograph printing started to develop in the early 1900s in Benares, Agra, and Calcutta, often taken up by small local publishers.¹⁶ Fascinatingly, Urdu artistic lithographs too became popular in the twentieth century India, with the printing of Muhammad Abdur Rahman Chughtai’s Muraqqa-e-Chughtai based on Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib’s Urdu poetry from the nineteenth century. Iftikhar Dadi terms the synthesis of artistic practices, aesthetics, and technologies of the twentieth century as “lithographic assemblage,” where an intersection is observed between Mughal and Persian manuscript production, later printing establishments in India, and the circulation of lithographed texts among the masses.¹⁷

A less expensive method of printing than traditional mechanical printing at the time, the artistic lithographic book of poetry and drawings may be viewed in the same tradition as South Asian manuscripts. These lithographs expanded options for Urdu readers especially at a time when Persian (using the same script as Urdu) was replaced by English for administrative and colonial purposes under the British in 1835.¹⁸ The Murraqa-e-Chughtai is thus a part of the rich traditions of bookmaking in South Asia distinguished by its lexicon, diversity, and materiality.

A Contemporary Inheritance: Jasoosi novels, Stamp Albums, and a Future with Books

He carried two suitcases, the first one containing clothes and gifts, the second empty. For it would be on this visit, his grandfather had said, that the books in his glass fronted case, collected over a lifetime and preserved under lock and key, would be given to Ashoke.

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake¹⁹

Post Partition, print culture thrived in Pakistan with local publishers selling hundreds of copies of Urdu fiction and nonfiction for adults and children since the sixties. The love for spy and crime thrillers by Urdu writers was passed down to me by my aunt at eleven years of age when she bestowed me her collection of almost three hundred detective novels by Urdu novelist, Ishtiaq Ahmed (b.1941-2015). These were all first editions printed on simple and affordable yellow newsprint paper. I randomly picked one book called Ye Bachay Khatarnaak Hain (These Kids are Dangerous), and very soon I was sucked into a world of ingenious spies, even cleverer investigators, luxury mansions, and bizarre locations involving crimes of stealth, homicides, and plots to topple over governments.

Ahmed wrote more than eight hundred novels for children during his career. He was popular between the seventies and nineties with his Inspector Jamshed and Inspector Kamran Mirza series. (However, he became a controversial figure in recent decades due to his orthodox stance on Ahmadis and a broad support of military regimes; these sentiments weaved in his fictitious stories). Today, several novels are reprinted on white newsprint with covers taking after contemporary Hollywood heroes and villains – the earliest editions with artist made unique book covers can scarcely be found in book markets, presently.

The modality of the book in South Asia is versatile, meant for masses, and the noble elite. However, books can also be individualistic expressions of beauty, enthusiastic collecting, and art. Scrap booking, a popular activity amongst school going children is an example of making books intended for documenting memories and personalized individual amusement. We may also consider stamp books or “philately” (the practice of collecting postage stamps) as artistic expressions and personal hobbies of individuals. These small stamp prints are playful and beautiful insights into world geography, art, culture, and history among other themes. A decade years ago, a friend left her whole collection of postage stamps to my sister and me. After archiving the stamps, I discovered that they totaled over two thousand in number from forty-four countries. Images on these stamps are of renowned global artworks, cultural objects, and personalities. Stamp books are nothing short of nostalgia, allowing the collector to gather their thoughts and memories in neat books while letting other viewers (should a collector desire to do so) peek into tidbits of history, culture, and personalities. Here, I am reminded of Siri Hustvedt, who writes:

Books are remembered consciously in pictures and words, but they are also present in the strange shifting room of our unconsciousness. Others, which for some reason have no power to rearrange our lives, are often forgotten entirely. The ones that stay with us, however, become us, part of the mysterious working of the human mind that translates little symbols on a page into a lived reality.

Siri Hustvedt, Living, Thinking, Looking²⁰

The last two decades have seen a significant influx of book fairs and shops in Lahore and Karachi in Pakistan. Up until ten years ago, places like Urdu Bazaar in Karachi were popular, selling new and used copies of educational books, local publications, and sometimes older and rare copies. However, due to poor maintenance of the area’s infrastructure, availability of digitized copies of books, and a lack of variety, the Bazaar has seen its buyers’ number plummeting. Digitization of printed books has seen a steady rise, skyrocketing during the Covid 2019 pandemic when educational instruction shifted from in person to online modes, in addition to closing of social spaces. Electronic reading offers benefits: e-publications consume no physical space and are often much cheaper alternatives to physical books. However, for many individuals, including myself, digital books can be difficult to annotate and neither bring the scent of fresh or old books nor the satisfying tactile feel of holding a paper bound book in hand.

For over a millennium, books have been visual and literate expressions of connections between South Asian peoples, their history, and contemporary culture. Examples shown in the essay here demonstrate that the physical materiality of books in numerous media have contributed to a serious and sustaining culture of knowledge making in South Asia. However, where does the future of the book lie? It seems for now that paper and digital copies are functioning simultaneously, as we move increasingly into the era of digital technology and remote learning. Collective, individual, and institutional support encourages the research of book traditions. Additionally, educational models can weave histories of these lineages into their curricula with art and social studies projects that inspire students of all grades to study book and paper ontologies.

Might we – twenty first century scholars, artists, critics, and curators – learn to handle spines and screens as we touch a flower at its stalks, read a book as we see a painting, and explore with the heart as much as the mind? To do so would be to inhabit worlds fragrant with wood, arsenic, gum, and calico and those smelling of water damage, dead insects, dry rot and decay. ²¹

Title image: The Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara Expounding the Dharma to a Devotee: Scrolled Folio from a Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra Manuscript, Mahavihara Master, early 12th century, India, watercolour on palm leaf, 2 3/4 x 16 7/16 in. (7 x 41.8 cm), MET Open Access

Bibliography

1. Aitken, Molly Emma. The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting, Yale University Press, Singapore, 2010.
2. Blair, Sheila S. The Decorated Papers Used in Manuscripts in Later Islamic Times, Muqarnas, Vol 17, 2000.
3. Dalrymple, William. Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, Great Britain, 2019.
4. Hustvedt, Siri. Living, Thinking, Looking. Scepter Books, UK, 2013.
5. Khullar, Sonal. Old Stacks New Leaves: The Art of the Book in South Asia, University of Washington Press, Seatle, 2023.
6. Knudsen, Toke Lindegaard et al. Body and Cosmos: Studies in Early Indian Medical and Astral Sciences in Honour of Kenneth G. Zysk, Brill, Boston, 2021.
7. Kumar, Navin. Buddhist Book Illumination, Navin Kumar Gallery, https://www.navinkumar.com/content/books/manuscripts1988/chapter3.html, accessed June 19, 2023
8. Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. New York, Mariner, 2004.
9. Shcheglova, Olimpiada P. “Lithography ii. In India,” Encyclopædia Iranica, 2012, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/lithography-ii-in-india, accessed June 21, 2023.
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