First Bengali printing types
Primeros tipos de imprenta bengalíes
- Date
- 1778 · confidence high
- Place
- Hooghly-Chinsurah, West Bengal, India
- Credited to
- Charles Wilkins and Panchanan Karmakar
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
Printing types of the Bengali script cut and cast at Hooghly for Halhed's Grammar of the Bengal Language. They opened printing in Indian scripts.
The goldsmith Panchanan Karmakar, trained by Wilkins, cut the punches; authorship is often credited only to Wilkins.
What it led to
- the Serampore mission press
- types for other Indian scripts such as Devanagari
- school books and newspapers in Bengali