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History of Sylheti PrintingAs far as we know, Sylheti is unique among Indian languages in having its first printing font designed, and its subsequent printing and publishing industry developed, by nationals and not by foreigners. This is in marked contrast to Bengali and Assamese, whose printing and publishing were, at least initially, developed by Europeans. By the mid 19th century, Sylhet already had a remarkable level of rural literacy, with manuscript books in wide circulation being copied by hand. (You can view examples of two such books on the Sylheti Literature page) |
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Then in the 1860's Moulvi Abdul Karim left Sylhet and stayed several years in Europe where he learned the printing trade. On his return he designed a woodblock type for the Siloti Nagri alphabet and founded the Islamia Press in Sylhet Town in about 1870. Metal type soon followed, and other Siloti Nagri presses were established in Sunamgonj and Shillong. Even Calcutta, though over 350 miles from Sylhet, at one time had at least 3 presses, and at least one newspaper was published there - this is because Sylheti young men in their thousands used to go to Calcutta seeking work on ships, often waiting months for an opening and having little to do except read. |
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Printing in Sylheti seems to have suffered a decline after Partition in 1947, with the last presses closing down by the early 1970's. We understand that the Islamia Press in Sylhet Town was destroyed by fire during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. In 1997 STAR developed a basic computer font generated from scanned samples of the wood block type and intended for use by linguists and academics studying Sylheti literature. However, so much interest was shown by the Bengali media at the demonstration of the font in Sylhet, December 1997, that STAR was commissioned by the Sylot Academy to develop a Siloti Nagri computer font for general use. |
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The resulting "New Surma" font was designed for clarity and ease of reading, and to reflect the character of both the Sylheti manuscripts and the earlier printing fonts. You can see a small sample of this font on this page, and also in the Siloti Nagri transcripts of the Sylheti Literature samples. If you would like to download a copy of the font for your own use, go to Siloti Nagri Font. |
wood block font
metal type
early computer font
New Surma font