NCERT Textbook - Print, Culture and Modern World | Social Studies (SST) Class 10 PDF Download

 Page 1


153
Print   Culture
It is difficult for us to imagine a world without printed matter. We
find evidence of print everywhere around us – in books, journals,
newspapers,  prints of famous paintings, and also in everyday things
like theatre programmes, official circulars, calendars, diaries,
advertisements, cinema posters at street corners. We read printed
literature, see printed images, follow the news through newspapers,
and track public debates that appear in print. We take for granted
this world of print and often forget that there was a time before
print. We may not realise that print itself has a history which has, in
fact, shaped our contemporary world. What is this history? When
did printed literature begin to circulate? How has it helped create
the modern world?
In this chapter we will look at the development of print, from its
beginnings in East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India. We
will understand the impact of the spread of technology and consider
how social lives and cultures changed with the coming of print.
Print  Culture  and  the  Modern  World
Chapter VII
Print Culture and the Modern World
Fig. 1 – Book making before the age of print, from
Akhlaq-i-Nasiri, 1595.
This is a royal workshop in the sixteenth century,
much before printing began in India. You can see
the text being dictated, written and illustrated. The
art of writing and illustrating by hand was
important in the age before print. Think about
what happened to these forms of art with the
coming of printing machines.
Page 2


153
Print   Culture
It is difficult for us to imagine a world without printed matter. We
find evidence of print everywhere around us – in books, journals,
newspapers,  prints of famous paintings, and also in everyday things
like theatre programmes, official circulars, calendars, diaries,
advertisements, cinema posters at street corners. We read printed
literature, see printed images, follow the news through newspapers,
and track public debates that appear in print. We take for granted
this world of print and often forget that there was a time before
print. We may not realise that print itself has a history which has, in
fact, shaped our contemporary world. What is this history? When
did printed literature begin to circulate? How has it helped create
the modern world?
In this chapter we will look at the development of print, from its
beginnings in East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India. We
will understand the impact of the spread of technology and consider
how social lives and cultures changed with the coming of print.
Print  Culture  and  the  Modern  World
Chapter VII
Print Culture and the Modern World
Fig. 1 – Book making before the age of print, from
Akhlaq-i-Nasiri, 1595.
This is a royal workshop in the sixteenth century,
much before printing began in India. You can see
the text being dictated, written and illustrated. The
art of writing and illustrating by hand was
important in the age before print. Think about
what happened to these forms of art with the
coming of printing machines.
India and the Contemporary World
154
1  The First Printed Books
Fig. 2 – A page from the Diamond Sutra.
The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan
and Korea. This was a system of hand printing. From AD 594
onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper – also
invented there – against the inked surface of woodblocks. As both
sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional
Chinese ‘accordion book’ was folded and stitched at the side.
Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy,
the beauty of calligraphy.
The imperial state in China was, for a very long time, the major
producer of printed material. China possessed a huge bureaucratic
system which recruited its personnel through civil service
examinations. Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast
numbers under the sponsorship of the imperial state.  From the
sixteenth century, the number of examination candidates went up
and that increased the volume of print.
By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the
uses of print diversified. Print was no longer used just by scholar-
officials. Merchants used print in their everyday life, as they collected
trade information. Reading increasingly became a leisure activity.
The new readership preferred fictional narratives, poetry,
autobiographies, anthologies of literary masterpieces, and romantic
plays. Rich women began to read, and many women began
publishing their poetry and plays. Wives of scholar-officials published
their works and courtesans wrote about their lives.
This new reading culture was accompanied by a new technology.
Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported
in the late nineteenth century as Western powers established their
outposts in China. Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture,
catering to the Western-style schools. From hand printing there was
now a gradual shift to mechanical printing.
1.1 Print in Japan
Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing
technology into Japan around AD 768-770. The oldest Japanese book,
printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheets
of text and woodcut illustrations. Pictures were printed on textiles,
New words
Calligraphy – The art of beautiful and stylised
writing
Page 3


153
Print   Culture
It is difficult for us to imagine a world without printed matter. We
find evidence of print everywhere around us – in books, journals,
newspapers,  prints of famous paintings, and also in everyday things
like theatre programmes, official circulars, calendars, diaries,
advertisements, cinema posters at street corners. We read printed
literature, see printed images, follow the news through newspapers,
and track public debates that appear in print. We take for granted
this world of print and often forget that there was a time before
print. We may not realise that print itself has a history which has, in
fact, shaped our contemporary world. What is this history? When
did printed literature begin to circulate? How has it helped create
the modern world?
In this chapter we will look at the development of print, from its
beginnings in East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India. We
will understand the impact of the spread of technology and consider
how social lives and cultures changed with the coming of print.
Print  Culture  and  the  Modern  World
Chapter VII
Print Culture and the Modern World
Fig. 1 – Book making before the age of print, from
Akhlaq-i-Nasiri, 1595.
This is a royal workshop in the sixteenth century,
much before printing began in India. You can see
the text being dictated, written and illustrated. The
art of writing and illustrating by hand was
important in the age before print. Think about
what happened to these forms of art with the
coming of printing machines.
India and the Contemporary World
154
1  The First Printed Books
Fig. 2 – A page from the Diamond Sutra.
The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan
and Korea. This was a system of hand printing. From AD 594
onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper – also
invented there – against the inked surface of woodblocks. As both
sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional
Chinese ‘accordion book’ was folded and stitched at the side.
Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy,
the beauty of calligraphy.
The imperial state in China was, for a very long time, the major
producer of printed material. China possessed a huge bureaucratic
system which recruited its personnel through civil service
examinations. Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast
numbers under the sponsorship of the imperial state.  From the
sixteenth century, the number of examination candidates went up
and that increased the volume of print.
By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the
uses of print diversified. Print was no longer used just by scholar-
officials. Merchants used print in their everyday life, as they collected
trade information. Reading increasingly became a leisure activity.
The new readership preferred fictional narratives, poetry,
autobiographies, anthologies of literary masterpieces, and romantic
plays. Rich women began to read, and many women began
publishing their poetry and plays. Wives of scholar-officials published
their works and courtesans wrote about their lives.
This new reading culture was accompanied by a new technology.
Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported
in the late nineteenth century as Western powers established their
outposts in China. Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture,
catering to the Western-style schools. From hand printing there was
now a gradual shift to mechanical printing.
1.1 Print in Japan
Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing
technology into Japan around AD 768-770. The oldest Japanese book,
printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheets
of text and woodcut illustrations. Pictures were printed on textiles,
New words
Calligraphy – The art of beautiful and stylised
writing
155
Print   Culture
playing cards and paper money. In medieval Japan, poets and
prose writers were regularly published, and books were cheap
and abundant.
Printing of visual material led to interesting publishing practices. In
the late eighteenth century, in the flourishing urban circles at Edo
(later to be known as Tokyo), illustrated collections of paintings
depicted an elegant urban culture, involving artists, courtesans, and
teahouse gatherings. Libraries and bookstores were packed with
hand-printed material of various types – books on women, musical
instruments, calculations, tea ceremony, flower arrangements, proper
etiquette, cooking and famous places.
Box 1
Kitagawa Utamaro, born in Edo in 1753, was widely known for
his contributions to an art form called ukiyo (‘pictures of the floating
world’) or depiction of ordinary human experiences, especially urban
ones. These prints travelled to contemporary US and Europe and
influenced artists like Manet, Monet and Van Gogh. Publishers like
Tsutaya Juzaburo identified subjects and commissioned artists who
drew the theme in outline. Then a skilled woodblock carver pasted
the drawing on a woodblock and carved a printing block to
reproduce the painter’s lines. In the process, the original drawing
would be destroyed and only prints would survive.
Fig. 3 – An ukiyo
print by Kitagawa
Utamaro.
Fig. 4 – A morning scene,
ukiyo print by Shunman
Kubo, late eighteenth
century.
A man looks out of the
window at the snowfall while
women prepare tea and
perform other domestic
duties.
Page 4


153
Print   Culture
It is difficult for us to imagine a world without printed matter. We
find evidence of print everywhere around us – in books, journals,
newspapers,  prints of famous paintings, and also in everyday things
like theatre programmes, official circulars, calendars, diaries,
advertisements, cinema posters at street corners. We read printed
literature, see printed images, follow the news through newspapers,
and track public debates that appear in print. We take for granted
this world of print and often forget that there was a time before
print. We may not realise that print itself has a history which has, in
fact, shaped our contemporary world. What is this history? When
did printed literature begin to circulate? How has it helped create
the modern world?
In this chapter we will look at the development of print, from its
beginnings in East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India. We
will understand the impact of the spread of technology and consider
how social lives and cultures changed with the coming of print.
Print  Culture  and  the  Modern  World
Chapter VII
Print Culture and the Modern World
Fig. 1 – Book making before the age of print, from
Akhlaq-i-Nasiri, 1595.
This is a royal workshop in the sixteenth century,
much before printing began in India. You can see
the text being dictated, written and illustrated. The
art of writing and illustrating by hand was
important in the age before print. Think about
what happened to these forms of art with the
coming of printing machines.
India and the Contemporary World
154
1  The First Printed Books
Fig. 2 – A page from the Diamond Sutra.
The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan
and Korea. This was a system of hand printing. From AD 594
onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper – also
invented there – against the inked surface of woodblocks. As both
sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional
Chinese ‘accordion book’ was folded and stitched at the side.
Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy,
the beauty of calligraphy.
The imperial state in China was, for a very long time, the major
producer of printed material. China possessed a huge bureaucratic
system which recruited its personnel through civil service
examinations. Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast
numbers under the sponsorship of the imperial state.  From the
sixteenth century, the number of examination candidates went up
and that increased the volume of print.
By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the
uses of print diversified. Print was no longer used just by scholar-
officials. Merchants used print in their everyday life, as they collected
trade information. Reading increasingly became a leisure activity.
The new readership preferred fictional narratives, poetry,
autobiographies, anthologies of literary masterpieces, and romantic
plays. Rich women began to read, and many women began
publishing their poetry and plays. Wives of scholar-officials published
their works and courtesans wrote about their lives.
This new reading culture was accompanied by a new technology.
Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported
in the late nineteenth century as Western powers established their
outposts in China. Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture,
catering to the Western-style schools. From hand printing there was
now a gradual shift to mechanical printing.
1.1 Print in Japan
Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing
technology into Japan around AD 768-770. The oldest Japanese book,
printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheets
of text and woodcut illustrations. Pictures were printed on textiles,
New words
Calligraphy – The art of beautiful and stylised
writing
155
Print   Culture
playing cards and paper money. In medieval Japan, poets and
prose writers were regularly published, and books were cheap
and abundant.
Printing of visual material led to interesting publishing practices. In
the late eighteenth century, in the flourishing urban circles at Edo
(later to be known as Tokyo), illustrated collections of paintings
depicted an elegant urban culture, involving artists, courtesans, and
teahouse gatherings. Libraries and bookstores were packed with
hand-printed material of various types – books on women, musical
instruments, calculations, tea ceremony, flower arrangements, proper
etiquette, cooking and famous places.
Box 1
Kitagawa Utamaro, born in Edo in 1753, was widely known for
his contributions to an art form called ukiyo (‘pictures of the floating
world’) or depiction of ordinary human experiences, especially urban
ones. These prints travelled to contemporary US and Europe and
influenced artists like Manet, Monet and Van Gogh. Publishers like
Tsutaya Juzaburo identified subjects and commissioned artists who
drew the theme in outline. Then a skilled woodblock carver pasted
the drawing on a woodblock and carved a printing block to
reproduce the painter’s lines. In the process, the original drawing
would be destroyed and only prints would survive.
Fig. 3 – An ukiyo
print by Kitagawa
Utamaro.
Fig. 4 – A morning scene,
ukiyo print by Shunman
Kubo, late eighteenth
century.
A man looks out of the
window at the snowfall while
women prepare tea and
perform other domestic
duties.
India and the Contemporary World
156
2  Print Comes to Europe
For centuries, silk and spices from China flowed into Europe through
the silk route. In the eleventh century, Chinese paper reached Europe
via the same route. Paper made possible the production of
manuscripts, carefully written by scribes. Then, in 1295, Marco Polo,
a great explorer, returned to Italy after many years of exploration in
China. As you read above, China already had the technology of
woodblock printing. Marco Polo brought this knowledge back with
him. Now Italians began producing books with woodblocks, and
soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe. Luxury
editions were still handwritten on very expensive vellum, meant for
aristocratic circles and rich monastic libraries which scoffed at printed
books as cheap vulgarities. Merchants and students in the university
towns bought the cheaper printed copies.
As the demand for books increased, booksellers all over Europe
began exporting books to many different countries. Book fairs were
held at different places. Production of handwritten manuscripts was
also organised in new ways to meet the expanded demand. Scribes
or skilled handwriters were no longer solely employed by wealthy
or influential patrons but increasingly by booksellers as well. More
than 50 scribes often worked for one bookseller.
But the production of handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy
the ever-increasing demand for books. Copying was an expensive,
laborious and time-consuming business. Manuscripts were fragile,
awkward to handle, and could not be carried around or read easily.
Their circulation therefore remained limited.  With the growing
demand for books, woodblock printing gradually became more
and more popular. By the early fifteenth century, woodblocks were
being widely used in Europe to print textiles, playing cards, and
religious pictures with simple, brief texts.
There was clearly a great need for even quicker and cheaper
reproduction of texts. This could only be with the invention of a
new print technology. The breakthrough occurred at Strasbourg,
Germany, where Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known
printing press in the 1430s.
New words
Vellum – A parchment  made from the skin
of animals
Imagine that you are Marco Polo. Write a letter
from China to describe the world of print which
you have seen there.
Activity
Page 5


153
Print   Culture
It is difficult for us to imagine a world without printed matter. We
find evidence of print everywhere around us – in books, journals,
newspapers,  prints of famous paintings, and also in everyday things
like theatre programmes, official circulars, calendars, diaries,
advertisements, cinema posters at street corners. We read printed
literature, see printed images, follow the news through newspapers,
and track public debates that appear in print. We take for granted
this world of print and often forget that there was a time before
print. We may not realise that print itself has a history which has, in
fact, shaped our contemporary world. What is this history? When
did printed literature begin to circulate? How has it helped create
the modern world?
In this chapter we will look at the development of print, from its
beginnings in East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India. We
will understand the impact of the spread of technology and consider
how social lives and cultures changed with the coming of print.
Print  Culture  and  the  Modern  World
Chapter VII
Print Culture and the Modern World
Fig. 1 – Book making before the age of print, from
Akhlaq-i-Nasiri, 1595.
This is a royal workshop in the sixteenth century,
much before printing began in India. You can see
the text being dictated, written and illustrated. The
art of writing and illustrating by hand was
important in the age before print. Think about
what happened to these forms of art with the
coming of printing machines.
India and the Contemporary World
154
1  The First Printed Books
Fig. 2 – A page from the Diamond Sutra.
The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan
and Korea. This was a system of hand printing. From AD 594
onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper – also
invented there – against the inked surface of woodblocks. As both
sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional
Chinese ‘accordion book’ was folded and stitched at the side.
Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy,
the beauty of calligraphy.
The imperial state in China was, for a very long time, the major
producer of printed material. China possessed a huge bureaucratic
system which recruited its personnel through civil service
examinations. Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast
numbers under the sponsorship of the imperial state.  From the
sixteenth century, the number of examination candidates went up
and that increased the volume of print.
By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the
uses of print diversified. Print was no longer used just by scholar-
officials. Merchants used print in their everyday life, as they collected
trade information. Reading increasingly became a leisure activity.
The new readership preferred fictional narratives, poetry,
autobiographies, anthologies of literary masterpieces, and romantic
plays. Rich women began to read, and many women began
publishing their poetry and plays. Wives of scholar-officials published
their works and courtesans wrote about their lives.
This new reading culture was accompanied by a new technology.
Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported
in the late nineteenth century as Western powers established their
outposts in China. Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture,
catering to the Western-style schools. From hand printing there was
now a gradual shift to mechanical printing.
1.1 Print in Japan
Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing
technology into Japan around AD 768-770. The oldest Japanese book,
printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheets
of text and woodcut illustrations. Pictures were printed on textiles,
New words
Calligraphy – The art of beautiful and stylised
writing
155
Print   Culture
playing cards and paper money. In medieval Japan, poets and
prose writers were regularly published, and books were cheap
and abundant.
Printing of visual material led to interesting publishing practices. In
the late eighteenth century, in the flourishing urban circles at Edo
(later to be known as Tokyo), illustrated collections of paintings
depicted an elegant urban culture, involving artists, courtesans, and
teahouse gatherings. Libraries and bookstores were packed with
hand-printed material of various types – books on women, musical
instruments, calculations, tea ceremony, flower arrangements, proper
etiquette, cooking and famous places.
Box 1
Kitagawa Utamaro, born in Edo in 1753, was widely known for
his contributions to an art form called ukiyo (‘pictures of the floating
world’) or depiction of ordinary human experiences, especially urban
ones. These prints travelled to contemporary US and Europe and
influenced artists like Manet, Monet and Van Gogh. Publishers like
Tsutaya Juzaburo identified subjects and commissioned artists who
drew the theme in outline. Then a skilled woodblock carver pasted
the drawing on a woodblock and carved a printing block to
reproduce the painter’s lines. In the process, the original drawing
would be destroyed and only prints would survive.
Fig. 3 – An ukiyo
print by Kitagawa
Utamaro.
Fig. 4 – A morning scene,
ukiyo print by Shunman
Kubo, late eighteenth
century.
A man looks out of the
window at the snowfall while
women prepare tea and
perform other domestic
duties.
India and the Contemporary World
156
2  Print Comes to Europe
For centuries, silk and spices from China flowed into Europe through
the silk route. In the eleventh century, Chinese paper reached Europe
via the same route. Paper made possible the production of
manuscripts, carefully written by scribes. Then, in 1295, Marco Polo,
a great explorer, returned to Italy after many years of exploration in
China. As you read above, China already had the technology of
woodblock printing. Marco Polo brought this knowledge back with
him. Now Italians began producing books with woodblocks, and
soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe. Luxury
editions were still handwritten on very expensive vellum, meant for
aristocratic circles and rich monastic libraries which scoffed at printed
books as cheap vulgarities. Merchants and students in the university
towns bought the cheaper printed copies.
As the demand for books increased, booksellers all over Europe
began exporting books to many different countries. Book fairs were
held at different places. Production of handwritten manuscripts was
also organised in new ways to meet the expanded demand. Scribes
or skilled handwriters were no longer solely employed by wealthy
or influential patrons but increasingly by booksellers as well. More
than 50 scribes often worked for one bookseller.
But the production of handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy
the ever-increasing demand for books. Copying was an expensive,
laborious and time-consuming business. Manuscripts were fragile,
awkward to handle, and could not be carried around or read easily.
Their circulation therefore remained limited.  With the growing
demand for books, woodblock printing gradually became more
and more popular. By the early fifteenth century, woodblocks were
being widely used in Europe to print textiles, playing cards, and
religious pictures with simple, brief texts.
There was clearly a great need for even quicker and cheaper
reproduction of texts. This could only be with the invention of a
new print technology. The breakthrough occurred at Strasbourg,
Germany, where Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known
printing press in the 1430s.
New words
Vellum – A parchment  made from the skin
of animals
Imagine that you are Marco Polo. Write a letter
from China to describe the world of print which
you have seen there.
Activity
157
Print   Culture
New words
Platen – In letterpress printing, platen is a board which is
pressed onto the back of the paper to get the impression from
the type. At one time it used to be a wooden board; later it
was made of  steel
2.1 Gutenberg and the Printing Press
Gutenberg was the son of a merchant and grew up on a large
agricultural estate. From his childhood he had seen wine and olive
presses. Subsequently, he learnt the art of polishing stones, became a
master goldsmith, and also acquired the expertise to create lead
moulds used for making trinkets. Drawing on this knowledge,
Gutenberg adapted existing technology to design his innovation.
The olive press provided the model for the printing press, and moulds
were used for casting the metal types for the letters of the alphabet.
By 1448, Gutenberg perfected the system. The first book he printed
was the Bible. About 180 copies were printed and it took three
years to produce them. By the standards of the time this was fast
production.
The new technology did not entirely displace the existing art of
producing books by hand.
In fact, printed books at first closely resembled the written
manuscripts in appearance and layout. The metal letters imitated the
ornamental handwritten styles. Borders were illuminated by hand
with foliage and other patterns, and illustrations were painted. In the
books printed for the rich, space for decoration was kept blank on
the printed page. Each purchaser could choose the design and decide
on the painting school that would do the illustrations.
In the hundred years between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were
set up in most countries of Europe.  Printers from Germany travelled
to other countries, seeking work and helping start new presses. As
the number of printing presses grew, book production boomed.
The second half of the fifteenth century saw 20 million copies of
printed books flooding the markets in Europe. The number went
up in the sixteenth century to about 200 million copies.
This shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the
print revolution.
Fig. 6  – Gutenberg Printing Press.
Notice the long handle attached to the screw.
This handle was used to turn the screw and
press down the platen over the printing block
that was placed on top of a sheet of damp
paper. Gutenberg developed metal types for
each of the 26 characters of the Roman
alphabet and devised a way of moving them
around so as to compose different words of the
text. This came to be known as the moveable
type printing machine, and it remained the basic
print technology over the next 300 years.
Books could now be produced much faster than
was possible when each print block was
prepared by carving a piece of wood by hand.
The Gutenberg  press could print 250 sheets
on one side per hour.
Fig. 5 – A Portrait  of
Johann Gutenberg,
1584.
Printing block
placed over
paper
Frame
Screw
Handle
Platen