Although Jesuit missionaries introduced a moveable type printing press in Goa as early as 1556, it was not until the mid-19th century that print effectively became the dominant mode of textual production and academic scholarship in South Asia. The widespread availability of affordable lithographic and moveable type technologies in the mid-19th century paved the way for a new generation of Indian scholars from diverse cultural, caste and class backgrounds to reflect upon the methods and goals of philology, alongside the materiality of book objects. Their writings elucidate the complex relationship philology—as a discipline—forged between Eurocentric knowledge production, anti-colonial movement, reformist ideology, nationalist historiography, regional identity and ethical scholarship. My presentation will discuss how the first-generation of Indian philologists—especially the ones who compiled scholarly editions of early modern works in Hindi, Maithili, Persian and Sanskrit languages—grappled with and renegotiated the differences between the European history of philology and their homegrown traditions of textual scholarship.
Dr. Pranav Prakash is a Junior Research Fellow and the Director of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Christ Church, University of Oxford, UK. He is a Senior Fellow at the Andrew W. Mellow Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, Rare Book School, University of Virginia, and a Trustee of the American Printing History Association, New York, US. He specializes in the comparative study of literary cultures, book arts and religions in Persian and South Asian societies.