Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/891

 VII. }) BENGALI LANGUAGE. & LITERATURE. 849 the people, amongst whom he was called upon to _work, had become the all-absorbing matter of his Pancha- sthought. Through the labours of Panchanana চি Karmakara and his relative and colleague Manohara the art of punch-cutting became domesticated in India. We do not, however, mean to say that the art of printing in a crude form was not known in Bengal before Charles Wilkins came to the field. _We have come across a Ms. nearly 200 years old Crude এ | বে : printing _which was printed — engraved wooden blocks. knowl, But the art was not in general use; a stray en- 200 years _deavour for decorative purposes does not prognos- ticate a system ora regular cultivation of the art, so we may rightly pass over it. The next notice that we have of printing in Early Bengali is that of the printed Code of Regulations printing. drawn up by Sir Elija Impey on which all subse- quent legislation has been based. The regulations were translated by Mr. Jonathan Duncan, after- wards Governor of Bombay, and were printed at ee, :-Company's Press: im 17855. The. creat Cornwallis Code of 1793, translated into Bengali by Mr. Forster, who was in his time the most distinguished European scholar of Bengali, was printed atthe same press but from an improved fount, which continued to be the standard of Ben- gal types, till a neater and a smaller fount was pre- pared by Dr. Carey. Next to Sir Charles Wilkins, Natheniel Prassey Halhed and Graves Chamney Haughton came a host of European scholars in Bengali and other oriental languages, many of whom belonged to the Cri Ramapur Mission, but none of them was so 107
 * ৃ pee ago.