Text, Textuality and Digital Media Lecture Notes PDF

Text, Textuality and Digital Media Prof Arjun Ghosh Department of Humanities and Social Science Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi Lecture 7...

Text, Textuality and Digital Media Prof Arjun Ghosh Department of Humanities and Social Science Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi Lecture 7 Manuscript culture: India Welcome, today we will follow up on our discussion on manuscripts. As I have been repeating time and again in this in my lectures. The reason why we are going through the history of various kinds of textual production is that we want to understand how technological changes have affected histories of our processes of production of texts and distribution and understanding of texts, because we are currently going through a similar change for moving towards digital media. So, we want to look at look closely at various instances of these changes and the kind of large sweeping changes that these changes would have brought about at various instances in history. We had in one of our previous lectures looked at the history of morality in the western context, and then webe paid some attention to the tradition of Dastangoi specifically, which is a voice ofwas a practice of oral transmission, oral narratives, within the subcontinental context. In our previous lecture we looked at very closely at manuscript production but we did so primarily in our a European context, you knowin a western European context. While discussing manuscript production within a western European context, I did also suggest that it was not something that was happening only in Western Europe, many of these changes were happening through contact with other parts of the world, primarily with Central Asia, the Middle East, a Egypt, China. So, when paper comes in from China, some of the manuscript traditions coming from Central Asia, pPapyrus came in from Egypt, ink comes from some of the inks material to produce the inks comes in from Afghanistan and various other places. So, trade was very important, contact with the rest of the world was very important in the development. These contactsexts also aeffected other parts of the world and including the subcontinent. So, today we will look a little closely at what was happening within the context of manuscript production, within the Indian subcontinent. Of course this is a very vast field and I will just give you a very sShort introduction to this. The principal aim of this introduction is not to go into the factual processes of what kind of manuscripts are thereother, who produced this manuscript, who were the principal authors, who where the patronsents, this is not what interest us in this particular course. What is of interest for us is to understand the technological processes which wereas necessary for textual production to take place, and therefore the important point really is, that we must have a fathomed idea that, textual production it’s not merely that the author thinks and write, there are many steps towards textual production and the specific steps of textual production or in the context in which they are circulated and received determined the way theat text actually is constructed or written, the words themselves are constructed and written. And this is something that we will try to understand as weyou go through this course. Now, the origins of writing in India are a matter of dispute, of course this would be the case and this is of course true also in any other context, it is not only true of India but becauacrosse what we are talking about is a history of very early times, thousands of years ago, and very little evidence actually is available to us. As I have mentioned earlier that records wcould primarily be oral records, I mean it’s an oxymorona , oral is not a record because it does not (()) (5:28)is ephemeral, it does not last, and therefore we do not have any evidence, what we try to gathergether from twhere is any remnant of any tales, any images that may have been produced which talks about textual production or from within the narratives that are still extantend, some of them written down hundreds of years later, after hundreds of years of circulation they may carry traces of contemporary events which will help us date those narratives. But unlike manuscript records, oral records are very difficult to actually trace and also laysplace them within the chronological order. So, what I am going to talk about in terms of the origins of writing and theirre movement from morality to geographicchirographic traditions within India, within the Indian subcontinent, we need to talk about subcontinental context because obviously the modern-day India, the political India, is a very recent phenomena, (Refer Slide Time: 6:38) This subcontinent has hundreds of years of history of various empires, various civilizations and which have interbred and intermingled and interconnected for hundreds and thousands of years, so wethey will talk about the sub continental context rather than specifically the political India. One point that we need to note here which would be true of any society is that, in a primarily oral society before the coming of written texts, even learned people would be illiterate, even the elite within the society would be illiterate because literacy really means that you know the alphabet, you are able to read orand write and you are able to create or receive texts. But in a world which is oral there is no need for this kind of literacy, so people may be very learned but they would be learned through oral means, through the embodiment of knowledge rather than the textualization of knowledge. So, therefore we should not measure you know knowledge bases of oral societies on the basis of literacy, in an oral society, in a predominantly oral society illiterates are not ignorant, you know if you look at history, many of the great emperors would have been illiterates soave to say, I mean many of the poets would have not written their own poetry, they would have used scribes to do that. So, illiteracy is not a mark of ignorance, I would argue even today, many people who are very knowledgeable, extremely wise may still be illiterate, so I think that is something that we need to keep in mind. (Refer Slide Time: 8:52) Now, the earliest examples of writing within the Indian subcontinent surely is that of the Indus Valley civilization where you have the seals in which there are markings. That was around one can place them at around 2600 to 1900 Bbefore the Common Eera right, that was the kind of period in which these seals were found. But this willNow these were largely one would say principally for purposes of record keeping, of trade, and economic in nature, they would not have been used to tell stories in all probability. (Refer Slide Time: 9:21) And then the next real significant instance of writing is whether were the Ashokan pillars which were created round about 250 years Bbefore the Common Eera, before the year 0. So, and in between there were Vedic writings before the onset of Buddhism, so you understand the Ashokan pillars were created clearly after the onset of Buddhism, (Refer Slide Time: 9:56) But before the onset of Buddhism also there were Vedic writings which were available and most probably the Vedic script that was used was a Brahmin script, all right., very rare documents pass on to us and manuscripts doare not last very long and so a lot of this, it takes a lot of archaeological and expert kind of work to be able to trace and time these documents. But you must understand when we say that there were instances of Vedic writings does not mean that it was largely a chirographic society because the culture was largely oral (Refer Slide Time: 10:39) Visitors to India, to the subcontinent who came in from other countries and maintained records, other countries which did actually had practice of writing before writing originated in India or became prevalent in India, noted that in the courts and legal proceedings were largely oral, testimonies wouldy is where largely be oral, that would be true, we have evidence of it till about 300 years Bbefore the Common Eera. Now, it does not mean there wasere absence of writing, it was that writing was primarily restricted to other domains like trade, but in legal proceedings or artistic creation, you know literary creation you did not have the use of writing. The date that I just discussed was 300 years Bbefore the Common Era and however some as I said there is a great dispute over when exactly writing did comments, we really do not know. Some experts contest this and claimed that, there is evidence of codification in the Rrigv Veda which starts emerging at around 1200 years Bbefore the Common Era. So, that is a higher test of about 900 years. Now, the reason why other set of historians and scholars have questioned this dating or up to 1200 years is because that codification is possible even without the coming of writing, now one of the points that we would have figured out from our earlier lectures is that, it is with the coming of writing when the written text actually moves away from the speaker, from the immediate speech community, that you have the need for grammar, the codification, right. However, it is possible to argue that this kind of codified techniques could be possible also within oral practices, it varies from context to context, now it would be like this, for example if you can think of 18 yearit in your own mind, that what is it that we recall easily? How many popular songs do you remember, the lines of how many popular songs do you remember? May not be fully but a large extent, that you keep may be humming to yourself or sing among friends and gatherings and how many prose passages do youthe actually remember?, right. So, this shows that poetry, in a verse is actually codified together in thea form of the rhyme and the rhythm and becomes easier to remember. So, there is a certain degree of codification which is possible even within oral practices, so therefore codification though becomes much more regimented much more stringent in the written era, it does not mean that codification itself would be something that is an unevidence of a written tradition. So, if there is be in athe codification of the Rigv Veda at around 1200 years Bbefore the Common Eera, does not mean that it is evidence of a literate society. So these disputes are there, some of the important implications of this is that, if weyou look at certain passages and they talk about instances, you know many of theseis passages are also talking about practical life, things that are happening around, they arehave contemporary references, so some of them carries theseis evidence of the fact, that someone who is reciting a certain passage and forgets a certain part of the passage thean what would they do? They are advised within that particular text to actually then start reciting something similar but maybe a different text, they are not advised to immediately refer to the written text and learn it by heart and then recite it again, as one would do in a literate society or another suggestion is, if monks did forget a certain passage or certain track they would then have to travel to a greater scholar and undertake a process of learning of that track before they participate in recitation once again. As I have noted earlier, that in an oral society it is important to constantly keep reciting and repeating in order to keep the text in circulation, it is only by recitation that the text remains in circulation because that is how the human brain works, the more you keep practicing, the more you keep revising and recalling, you will be able to remember a whole lot more, the moment there is no revision, no repetition, that particular knowledge is within the danger of getting lost. With writing of course the need for repetition or the need for revision is reduced. So, you would recall that in some of the religious practices, people would have to recite a certain holy text or a set of holy verses every single day, maybe more than once a day, that is a practice to ensure that, that text actually keeps getting perpetuated and keeps remaining in circulation. Within the subcontinent writing, evidence of writing really started gaining interactionstraction, started increasing in evidence within the first 500 years of the Common Eera. (Refer Slide Time: 17:24) And writing took various forms, there would be inscription on rocks (Refer Slide Time: 17:29) Inscription on copper plates- tambra patra- and palm leaf manuscripts, palm leaf manuscripts could have been of various kinds (Refer Slide Time: 17:39) Or there would be the Bhurja Patra or the birch bark manuscripts, primarily found in the Himalayan region, both in Kashmir as well as in Assam, and peoplepaper really comes into being only by about the fourteenth and fifteen centuries from Central Asia through the various rulers who came in from Central Asia or traders and other scholars. There is also the Sanchi Pat the bark of the Agarwood tree, primarily, predominantly in Assam, this would be used. Across the Himalayas in China, they would use bamboo to write on (Refer Slide Time: 18:23) Which was not so much of a practice in India, in India they did use bamboo but only as a pen, or a writing equipment. (Refer Slide Time: 18:36) Palm leaf where of various kinds, you know there was Palmayra palm or the Tarigach which produced the writing written sheets which is the Kharatal, it also be called the tali the name of the leaf of the plant was the Borassus flabellifer (Refer Slide Time: 18:52) And the other leaf that was used, other palm tree that was used, the Corypha leaf or the Talipat. Now, these were of different sizes you know, the Palmyraa was one point, is is of one and half to one and three-quarter inches wide, wherea is the Talipat is one and three quarters to about 3 inches wide, it’s wider. Since wethey find that manuscripts under 1.75 inches, that is, one and three quarter inches, are very uncommon, so obviously one can assume that it is the Corypha leaf which is most prevalent but very asvarious parts of the country used various kinds of leaves. Also the Palmyra is more prone to insect attack, or Corypha is less prone to insect attack, so Corypha is the one that is more widespread, more favorite among the scribes. Once the leaf is cut, the mid leaf is removed, you know the leaf comes in a kind of a star, sort of pattern each of the branches the mid leaf is removed, the leaves are boiled and drtried multiple times to harden, this is a certain process as we saw, even in within even when Western Europe we saw how the parchment (()) (20:14)making process was, you know a certain laborious process which is theire, similarly here the preparation of the writing surface takes a certain amount of time, various kinds of techniques were developed in various parts of the world. We know that in Egypt when they prepare Papyrus, they would take papyrus, the leaves and then they will soak them in water and then put them across in a criss-cross pattern you can check online sources these are very easily available pieces of knowledge (Refer Slide Time: 20:49) Put it in a criss-cross fashion and beat them so that they mergeust into a larger piece, but here we find that most of these, the palm leaf documents are elongated, they are long pieces (Refer Slide Time: 21:02) We talked about the shape of paper in the previous lecture, you know the fact that the shape of paper takes from the shape of parchment and is handed down in traditions, so when the Europeans comes into our country the shape of the writing material changes, whereas traditionally, within India, because of the use of palm leaf as a writing surface the shape of the writing surface was very different fromthan the one that we are used to today, (Refer Slide Time: 21:31) The shape e, that paper really takes, paper can really be cut and put across wood, it can be cut into any shape that you want but it is nearly a tradition that allows. And also the other point is that you know within the CodiCodexces, that the predominant technique is to open it across from right to left, whereas within the palm leaf manuscripts they would open from bottom to the top, of course we know in various Arabic and Central Asian documents they would open (Refer Slide Time: 22:07) From left to right instead of right to left. So these are various kinds of traditions which are there with various kinds of conventions. Certainly the history of colonialism plays a very important role in universae lizinges in the European tradition. So, therefore even in the creation, in the technology behind the production of text, the certain cultural, conventional instances play a very important role. (Refer Slide Time: 22:35) So, as I was talking about the preparation of these, the palm leaf for writing, the mid leaf is removed it is cut within a sharp knife and the leaves are boiled and dtried multiple times to harden, they are dried in their shed and not in the sun, because the heat of the sun if it is too much, could actually cause the palm leaf to shiver. (Refer Slide Time: 22:58) In some parts of the country the palm leaves could be kept under mud for a longish period of time and then dried, various traditions are there, they would be smoothened, the surface needed to be smoothened, they would use a kind of a stone, maybe pumice stone to smoothen it, then the leaf would be cut to the certain size, all the leavesf would be cut to a standard size. As I said in Assam they use the Sanchi bark the bark of the tree (Refer Slide Time: 23:28) Which would again be dried in the sun for about 10 days and both surfaces shouldwould have to be cleaned, the outer surface needed to be shaved off to remove the outer darker layer and then they are smoothened and polished and made ready for writing and painting, right. Now, colours for writing would be prepared by the scribes (Refer Slide Time: 23:53) Now, colours for writing would be prepared by the scribesA and these colours are by and large similar to the kinds that wereas there in the European context because theise colours would have a certain material that is used for theise colours would be something that is a part of that trade network and they would be very expensive, the ink would be very expensive. (Refer Slide Time: 24:18) Mostly black would be used for writing, yellow and red for painting, decoration, gold and silver was primarily used for the bBorders, they would be used for the more and more sort of special documents that is prepared, the manuscript that could be prepared. Now, to put these leaves together, keep theise leaves together, holes would be made with a stylus in the middle of the palm leaf (Refer Slide Time: 24:498) And a cord would be passed through these holes and they would be tied together, the palm leaf sheets would be bound between two strips of wood and there could be up to a 100 leaves in one set you know and they would be bound between the two woods and then tied, that cord would be tied across the entire thing and kept together and they would also be wrapped with cloth. (Refer Slide Time: 25:14) And it is only then that the writing really starts, after this entire process, and there is a lot of use of organic repellents to keep insects and woarms away from the sheets and because theythere could be termite tree eaten, most of the times wouldwhat happens is these (Refer Slide Time: 25:39- 26:05) Manuscripts would not last very long, they would maximum lastrge for about 200 years which is quite long, I mean how many books do last for 200 years, they get moth eaten. So we do understand that these are organic materials and therefore manuscripts which are older than let’s say 4 to 500 years would be very rare manuscripts, they rarely would survive, they would also be not complete manuscripts, some parts of it may have survived the others have to be (()) (26:06)deciphered. (Refer Slide Time: 26:07) The tradition would be that almost, so every family would have their own manuscripts or therey would be wealthy families or maybe royal families or maybe some monasteries would have their own manuscripts and when a manuscript really reaches towards the end of its life someone-ummoned the scholar, the scribe- actually makes a new copy of it, a fresh copy of it. (Refer Slide Time: 26:33) So, that is the tradition through which these manuscripts continue to survive, not that it is produced once and it remains, but it is constantly reproduced again and again and that’s how the manuscript really gets handed down, now you would imagine that while it is getting copied and rewritten, there are various kinds of interpolations, interjections, changes, contemporary references, styles of writing, handwriting, various kinds of things would undergo a change. (Refer Slide Time: 27:05) So, though a story a particular narrative or a particular piece of spiritual set of doctrines could be noted down which could be passed down for generations for hundreds and thousands of years but the particular, the physical sort of representation of it the manuscript that we are talking about that would not be really very old. Now, what kind of writing implements would be used, primarily they would use a stylus, stylus was also used to make the hole in the manuscript to pass the cord. (Refer Slide Time: 27:39) They would also use pens and brushes, primarily reead pens wcould be used which wcould be made of bamboo or other kinds of sticks and the metal stylus would be used to also write on the palm leaf primarily in Southern India and this is a very interesting process, a very interesting process (Refer Slide Time: 27:59) The stylus would really be held either like this or you know it could be held if a whole has to be made a lot more pressure has to be put with a thumb on the top and the little finger will coincidego inside in order to hold it together, so various kinds of techniques, but in order to write, they could write with their entire fist in place and they would usually take the piece of paper within the hand, hold it like this and keep inscribing, right. Very interesting that when we are writing on paper it is the hand that moves, the paper remains stationary, so even if I am writing on the board at the back, it is the hand which would be moving and not the writing surface but on the palm leaf, it’s actually the writing surface that moves, as the scribe holds the stylus at the same place and slowly with his thumb and forefinger keep moving the palm leaf from one end to another, right. This is also true of mediaeval scrolls, you know the writing would happen at the same place but the scroll will keep on scrolling from one side to another, and in the writing surface being long, this is a very convenient thing to do. (Refer Slide Time: 29:33) And what was happening with these sharp stylus really is that it actually creates our groove on the surface, it creates a certain groove on the surface and there is no mark, after this they would take a paste of carbon, you know some kind of soouit or ink and rub it over these grooves and then the excess carbon will be wiped off, that will leave a black marking of the entire written space, right. So, that is a very interesting form of the way in which most palm leaf documents, of course therey were other forms, various, Indian subcontinent is a very large geography, various other kinds of this, the way modern kind of writing that is with athe reead pen, who wouldcould also be used, a bamboo pen would be prepared first, sharpened and dipped in ink and writing would also happen, calligraphy would happen, manuscript would be prepared. So, there are various, multiple kinds of techniques which we used for theise manuscript writing and the scribe had to learn this process, it was not something that any writing process is not very natural though we do learn the use of pencil and then in a very early on in our childhood, these are certain techniques which people have to gather, people have to learn without which they are not able to use them, all right. (Refer Slide Time: 31:08) Iimportant point to note here is that there weare no gaps between the words usually, the letters were joined because you know the gaps between the words becomes a much later modern innovation, it was not there in the very early days. Point to be noted as I said is that these manuscripts did not last very long, you know in the humid climate, the survival rate of manuscripts would be very little, in fact most palm leaves did originate from the southern part of India, interestingly, it is in the southern part of India that you have a more humid climate you know the coastal regions and the manuscripts would there would survive a lot lesser, but more if you move towards the drier climate, more towards northern t India or even if you move towards Central Asia where these armpalm leafves writing surfaces would travel before the manuscript is created there, it’s almost like supply of raw paper and supply of palm leaf surfaces would be there through the trade routes. Documents produced in Central Asia, documents produced within the drier climates of the northern India survive a lot more than they would survive in southern India and also another important point to bewe noted ias that these writing processes, they were time-consuming, they required leisure, so people who are engaged in manual labor would not be able to do it, certainly literacy was the a matter of the elite, it was socially stratified. So therefore it required the patronage of royal families, who would funds various centers of education, various (()) (33:01), gGurukuls and various other kinds of maybe even centers of learning. Where were these manuscripts production would take place, but even though manuscripts did exist, the culture still remained largely of oral one, in which text would be used to commit to memory, manuscripts wcould not be used, would not be sort of in kind of daily use because monks, priests and learned people would know these lines, texts by heart, they would be committed to memory and they would keep on reciting it and committing it to memory. Because yYou are still talking about a largely overall sort of oral universe and you know that is the kind of universe that it is. WHe will through this course keep on returning to this theme of what happens within manuscripts in print and textual circulation within the Indian subcontinent, to keep a note of what changes were happening within the place which is around us, the Indian subcontinent. However, we you must understand that many of the issues that going towhich concern us are actually resultant of a modern Western civilization and therefore the focus of this course will continue to be to understand western processes a whole lot more and we will see how they get translated within the subcontinent from time to time. Thank you.  Text, Textuality and Digital Media Professor. Arjun Ghosh Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Lecture 8 Feudalism to Capitalism Welcome to this lecture, today we are going to look at a very important phase of European history which affected the rest of the globe simply because of the history of colonialism- a revolutionary change, which is a movement from feudalism to capitalism- and we would also try to understand what are the implications of this movement on textual practices. We have so far been looking at textual production through manual processes or embodied processes or processes which are created through the human hand or the human body, either the oral where the principal mechanism through which communication takes place is the voice, maybe even gestures, or the manuscript culture, where the principal ways in which writing takes place is through the hand and of course the other manual labor in preparing the various writing implements that are there. But it is at around a time at the end of the Middle Ages what we called the early modern period, with the first tenets of modern societies are getting to be seen within the European world, (Refer Slide Time: 2:03) That the printing press also comes into being, the printing press is a machine and we associate capitalism with machines, so you move from manual production to mechanized production and this is also a movement in which many other kinds of changes that take place in society and they have an impact also on the kind of texts that are created. (Refer Slide Time: 2:405) So, and important to note is that this shift from, kind of of a feudal society to a capitalist society is an all-encompassing one, it changes lives of the way human beings organize themselves, the way human beings are related to each other undergo a severe transformation, a revolutionary transformation, in this process, it’s a very slow process which takes place over hundreds of years probably one can say the entire range would be from about to 12 to 13 centuries to about the 19th-century, so that is a period of about 7 to 800 years. So, you know this is a very slow process but we want have to understand some of the significant changes that takes place through this shift. For this let us understand that there are, human beings have to, we have to live our lives, we have to undertake two kinds of production, production is things that we produce. Goods, clothes that we wear or you know food that we eat, things that we use, houses that we build, infrastructure that we build, everything is part of production, sometimes we can produce it for ourselves, sometimes whe can produce the things within the community or we can just walk into a shop and buy it, but someone has to put this in place. (Refer Slide Time: 4:2531) There are two kinds of production one is, the first is that of quantitative production, what happens in a quantitative production? So you have one seed which is planted, one example is agriculture, of course, one seed which is planted which produces a plant grows into a tree which will produce many more fruits and lot many more seeds, so there is a quantitative transformation or quantitative production. Agriculture is part of, when human beings learn agriculture, when human beings learn farming that is a part of a civilizational process where before that human beings would nearly be, would have been hunters and gatherers they would eat whatever food that is produced by nature, there was no settlement, they had to move from place to place to be able to in search for food, and that is also, anybody who is interested can look at the history of human civilization, how human beings travel from one place to another in search of food, in search of a space to where they could survive for shelter. But human beings with coming of agriculture, human settlements start happening what we called civilizations start developing. Human beings, to settle at one place they also need to build shelters, they need various kinds of infrastructure, those are also put together. So, quantitative production is one kind of production, the other kind of production is what is called qualitative production. (Refer Slide Time: 6:10) You take the wood from a tree and you produce a chair out of it, so the wood undergoes a qualitative change, the nature of the wood, usage of the wood is changed through this kind of production it does not grow in amount but it changes from one form to another form. So, that is a change of a qualitative kind. (Refer Slide Time: 6:40) Now, if you have to understand this it’s not that I mean one can argue that feudalism in primarily quantitative production, primarily agricultural where capitalism primarily qualitative transformation, it’s not that feudalism did not have qualitative transformation but capitalism had more qualitative transformation. It’s a shifting degrees you must understand in history we cannot have filled watertight compartments and yet we need to categorized, yet we need to categorized to be able to understand things does not necessarily mean that there was not coexistence of two things for a very long period of time, certainly there is, even today we have quantitative transformation, we use a lot of processed food today. So, thereat is a lot of qualitative transformation even in a basic need like food and that is something that comes about with capitalism, we rarely grow our own food at all, right? (Refer Slide Time: 7:414) Now, in this production process human beings have organized themselves into different kinds of relationships. There are different kinds of relationships that people enter into in order to make this production process possible or in order for this production process to continue to survive. So, in feudalism we look at a certain important inputs a certain important notes there, These are the various important inputs I will just explain it in a moment. Land is a very important resource within feudalism, because agriculture actually takes place on land. You need land that becomes thethe principal resource. There are various other resources you would need water, you need seeds, you need some tools to be able to function. But land is a very principal element and that which may not be abundant, and you also have someone to work on the land. Now, what happens is usually it is the serf who works on the land But the land is owned by the landlord. Someone owns the land and someone works on the land, now you must understand that this is a process which takes place in human history, where human beings start from being hunterer , gatherers then they settle down they sort of produce their own food, but soon people realize as farming techniques becomes better, better irrigation techniques, better implements sometimes use of livestock for farming,. People realize that with more efficient modes of farming, human beings can actually produce a lot more than they actually need. So, with more and inefficient processes of farming I could probably not cultivate enough for myself or my family to eat. But I realize now that our farming techniques have advanced so much that I am able to produce twice over of the amount of food that I need for my own survival. So that additional amount is what we called is surplus, that is surplus. Now, the moment surplus is generated I figure out that I need not work all the time, and in fact I figure out that if I can make my neighbor or somebody else work for me I need not work at all, I need not engage in manual labor at all, and that is where you have the birth of property, that people realize that if I am able to control land thean the other guy needs to work on this land for his own survival and therefore would be willing to work and give the surplus to me and that is in the form of rent. So, the serf works on the land and produces a crop, let us say produces six bananas. Aat the end of it, because the landlord owns the land, he extracts a certain rent from the serf. The serf keeps a little portion and the landlord takes a portion as rent. So, that is the mechanism through which feudalism actually functions, the land is owned by the landlord, the serf who is landless by and large works on the land, has to work on the land because that is the only way to produce food and because he uses that land, he pays a certain rent to the landlord and t That is how a distribution of resources takes place. What happens in capitalism? In capitalism it is not land but the capital which becomes the principal resource. The capital is not nearly money but also the factory, capital goods, also the raw materials, these are the inputs, large capital inputs that go ing. Now, there is a difference, the landlord could also be wealthy and the capitalist could be wealthy as well, but if there is a difference between the wealth of the landlord and the wealth of the capitalist, the wealth of the landlord is not measured in terms of the money that the landlord, the wealth that the landlord owns, but is measured in terms of the land that the landlord actually controls or in some societies there would be also measured in terms of the amount of livestock a person holds. But a capitalist may not have any land but I have a lot of money, but that money itself does not matter, it is only when you have invested the money and put it in the form of certain. It becomes a capital investment in the form of a factory or a raw material or something, that it becomes, takes the shape of capital. Capital is that which can be, money that which can be invested. So, in capitalism, capital replaces land as the principal resource and labor works on capital, labor goes to the factory, works out in the factory and produces goods and capital is owned by the capitalists because the labor does not have enough money to create a factory, earlier of course before mechanized production the carpenter could work in their own workshop and produce the chair but within a factory structure where there areis very large machines and all that is something a carpenter cannot put together, it does not have that kind of surplus that is generated., Now, the goods that are produced are not immediately distributed like the bananas, they are then sold in a market and then a certain revenue is generated, this revenue then is distributed as wage, part of it goes as wage to the labor and the rest of it goes as profit to the capitalist, This is how wealth gets distributed. The power equations remains as skewed as that in feudalism, only the process undergoes a change. But this is a major change, a very serious change. So youwe understand, it’s again important to understand this particular process. So goods are sold in the market and the revenue is generated and the revenue is then distributed between the capitalist and the labor, the labor gets a wage a fixed wage or a piece rate wage and the capitalist gets the profit. Now question could be arising in your mind as to why is the share, why does it look so unequal. Well it is historically unequal, it is really unequal, you just have to look around the world and see how much do companies today actually pay out as wages and how much, what kind of salaries the top executives within certain corporations take home. (Refer Slide Time: 16:08) Even when the economic crisis was happening at around and it still really on, the world has never really spentspun completely out of the crisis , which happened about 10 years ago,. oOne of the talking points was the huge salaries that CEOs chief executives of certain companies were towould take home, and really that salary, that pay packet is really in the form of profit. (Refer Slide Time: 16:34) And really incoming qualities are getting skewed more and more across the world and certainly in our country and the question could also be asked as to why is it that labor is, if labor is being given just this much, then why is it that the labor is being or the serf is being even given that amount? Wwhy are not they forced? Because it is not a slave, it is different from a slave society, a slave society is actually the slave owner owns the slave, the landlord does not owns the serf but landlord controls the serf, the capitalist does not own the labor but capitalist controls the labor through control over capital and labor gets a certain wage or the serf get a certain share of the production because they need to survive, they need to move on generation onand generation otherwise the next generation of the capitalist will have two do the work themselves, if they get into the production process themselves, engaged in manual labor themselves. It is not to say that capitalists do not work hard, some capitalists really work very hard but their working hard, like if we look at various people within society, I would not describe myself as a capitalist but within the capitalist the overall societal framework my position is a whole lot better as a teacher than many people who are working in hard labor out in the hot sun. (Refer Slide Time: 18:06) And so my time if I teach for one hour I earn a whole lot more than someone who can be working for an one entire week and earning a lot lesser than me. So, the world is skewed I mean it is not to say that the capitalist does not work hard, of course they do some of themy are very honest as well, most of them would be very honest. But it is beyond individuals, it’s not to blame the capitalist or the landlord, but the point is this is beyond individuals, this is a system within which you cannot do away with the wealth that you have and certainly charity is, it’s a point of another debate but this particular since this particular diagram and this particular discussion might actually spark certain questions in the minds of students, it’s important to say that we need to differentiate between charity and restructuring and sort of altering social relationships. Charity does not actually lead to wealth redistribution, it keeps, it tries to sort of keep the system less anomalous. So, you know, so therefore it’s important to critically look at this kind of relationship which is put in place in various kinds of systems. But getting back to understanding these systems, there are certain terminologies which we need to enter into. (Refer Slide Time: 19:4851) That both feudalism and capitalism are what we will call the mode of production and the land and the capital are the principal means of production, there could be other means of production,. iIt’s not that all forms of production in agriculture is the only form of production which is under feudalism there could be other forms. of you know Lland is not the only means of production, there could be other means of production:, teachers, priests, there could be medicine menant, various other kinds of professions do exist, everybody is not a the serf, everybody is not a landlord, but this is the principal sort of means of production and therefore the principal relationship and even within the capitalism thereat could be other professions which are there everybody’s not a laborer or a capitalist, there are other people In the for example soldiers, clerks and other kinds of people who are professions which could be there within the larger system. But capital and land are the principal means of production. (Refer Slide Time: 21:056) But capital and land other principal means of productionA and around thate principal means of production is a relation, the dominant relation of production, this is the defineding when you identify a feudal system by the defined dominant relationship which is that between landlord and serf and capitalism is thea relationship between capitalist and labor and landlords and the capitalists are the dominant classes by virtue of being the owners of the means of production. (Refer Slide Time: 21:36) Rent and wage become the mechanism for the distribution of wealth within these two modes of production, the wealth distribution takes place through a rent mechanism within feudalism and athe wage mechanism within capitalism. (Refer Slide Time: 21:56) So these are some of the important terms that we need to keep in mind as we move along through this course, because we had beenwould be using these terms as we discuss theat advancement of print and we ill try to understand theat advancement of print. (Refer Slide Time: 22:10) Now thisese change of the two systems which takes place across several hundred years in Europe brings about a certain important societal change, the implication of it. (Refer Slide Time: 22:25) So typically within feudalism there would be one landlord and many serfs and they are all working inon the land and therefore they stay near the land, so you typically in rural settings you have a village and there is a farm, sometimes people would be living close to the farm so the population is much more distributed. Because This farms are large and therefore population lives around the farms and the population really certain dense pockets of organization and that could be villages, some villages could be larger than the others. (Refer Slide Time: 223:5801) Towns and urban settlements would be much fewer and they would primarily be administrative or military or trade related, they were not production related. They are production related only in as much as trade is a part of production or distribution. But youto did not have factories, factories do come about within the capitalist framework where because of mechanized production you need a lot many more workers to work. Now, where is the population of workers, because at one point of time there were no factories and then most production is happening on land, predominantly, the carpentert is producing the chair in his own workshop, he is producing one chair at the end of the day or maybe two chairs and therefore it’s not a huge production but the machine can produce much faster and therefore can require much many more workers, initially fewer workers, later on much greater number of workers. (Refer Slide Time: 24:146) So as capitalism goes, we have people the poor really changing their definition from that of being serfs to that of being workers and this leads to migration. Because within capitalism production takes place around factories and people settle around the factories, the factories are small points that , they had to do not occupy huge tracts of land, in comparison to agricultural land, so the settlement would be a lot denser and this is the birth of the modern cities. So you have moved from rural to the urban. In fact, one point to be noted here is that this shift that is happening within, from the period of the feudal to the capital is a change of the definition of work, ora process of work and I would not go into all that in this particular course, but there is a great deal of discussion now within various kinds of academic discussions in a policy think tanks on the future of work. The nature of work also is undergoing a sea change with the coming of digital technologies- through artificial intelligence, machine learning, machines can do much of the work that human beings do far more efficiently and therefore a lot of work is getting displaced from human beings to machines and which can lead to serious kind of escalation in unemployment, so if you are interested dto check out this particular topic called the future of work. But jJust to point out that this kind of far-reaching changes take place when there are major technological shifts, major technological shifts lead to far-reaching changes within society and changes in relationships, political upheavals and various kinds of things that happen., Wwe are living through that era and therefore our previous arera which is that of the movement from feudalism to capitalism becomes very interesting first. (Refer Slide Time: 26:357) So, this process of organizationurbanization- moving from rural to urban- in and about do now by and large human beings still 50 years ago were predominantly human world, predominantly since history, predominantly beingen a rural race, human beings across the globe. Very shortly whe would have more people living in the cities then therey would be living in villages. So the urban population would outstrip the rural population worldwide. In certain countries, more advanced countries, it’s already the case, a place like India also very shortly I meanain I think right now it’s an equal proportion, the number of people who live in within a rural setup and urban setup one needs to check the exact numbers, but the point is that a great degree of urbanization has happened, but this hais happened over centuries, but a point of time when this urbanization process began almostor was taking place it lead to various kinds of conflicts. (Refer Slide Time: 27:51) The conflicts between the landlord and the capitalist class, because landlord needs the serfs to be able to continue to earn his rent, continue his social position and the capitalist needs the workers in order to continue the capitalist production. (Refer Slide Time: 28:08) And this leads to political tension, because understand that each of these two systems are identified to different kinds of political structures. Within feudalism it is the monarchy which is predominant and within capitalism it is primarily a parliamentary a more democratic system, it’s a republican form of government. What we need to understand is that there is this that the landlord there is a linkage between the landlord and the monarchy the monarch through various stratasatus you know therey could be a hierarchy within the feudal rural process, the monarchy sort of, ensures guarantees a certain kind of social stability to the landowning classes and the landowning classes could have various strataatus. So there could be the Dukes, the Knights, the courtiers, the aristocrats in the various, within more, if you are using more sub continental terms, they will be the Subedar and the there would be the people within the courtiers, there cwould be others the Taluqdars and others, so they would be organized, smaller to the larger, and the rent that is paid by the serf to the landlord would then there will be certain tributaries which would be collected throughas mechanisms of taxation. Now, the taxation mechanisms within , feudal process were very different from taxation mechanisms within capitalist processes, this is something that we also need to understand. Within feudal processes taxation rarely would be something that wasith part of law, in fact law is something that is modern and part of more identified with more democratic and capitalist setup. Taxation would happen through raids, through the threat of war, it is said that, so tributes would be collected. So remember these narratives of certain kind of rituals like the Ashwamedh yagya, t The sacrifice of the horse, where the horse would go through various territories and they would accept the over lordship of the person who, of the King who, is performing, that who has undertakening that sacrifice. So, you know that is something that and when they accept that overed over lordship, that means that they would, that over lordship is reallyarely realized through the payment of a tributary, a certain amount of money, a certain amount of wealth that is payed. The local raja accepts the over lordship of the Emperor. So it is through raids that theseis taxes are really realized, this taxes were not necessarily, theise kind of collection of taxes, of course there would be formal taxes as well which citizens would have to pay primarily within townships and other places. But they were not formalized to the extent that modern taxation mechanisms are put in place. And whereas in, even within democratic systems, within Parliamentary processes we are aware that there are, there is a certain hierarchy. I mean within the political setup there would be, the administrative setup, and the political setup, there is the member of Parliament for the local MLA, the corporation representative warder, the Mmayorle, the Chief Minister and then you have memnumbers of the Ccabinet, then you have the Prime Minister and the Ppresident, that’s the Indian setup. Various countries and various organizations, certainly there is a hierarchy of representation and hierarchy of the political order. And also the administrative order therey would be the district magistrate, the block level officer, the district magistrate, then you have the administrative service at the state-level and then the Central level, there is a secretary, joint secretaries, principal secretaries, Cabinet secretaries. So there is a certain administrative hierarchy and therefore there are various kinds of offices, bouth the systems have different kinds of hierarchies, there isy as a long list of hierarchical positions between the top and the bottom which are shown here in on both the sides withinbetween the monarch and the landlord and the Parliament and the individual capitalist. It is something that we need to note. And certainly early capitalism did not have an universal adult franchise, certainly India is a country which from the birth of the Indian democracy, that is in 1947, the first really general elections which happened in 1952 there was universal adult franchise, this was not true though elections did take place in India before 1947 we did not have, everybody could not vote for everybody else, there was no universal, certain people could vote for certain constituencies buwhat under the Constitution that we have now every citizen of the country has a single transferable vote, a single vote really and that is the universal adult franchise. But this is not true in the birth of democracy. In the United States still very recently blacks could not vote, womean did not have a vote in most European countries and certainly in places like England till a long period I mean only a certain section of thea population, the working class did not have a vote till many years of the functioning of the Parliament really. So what we do understand that though these processes do evolve, they do undergo processes of change, there are certain fundamental significant differences between the two systems which we are trying to study today. (Refer Slide Time: 35:06) So, what I did point out in my previous slide is that this process of urbanization and the process of urbanization which is sort of pushed, which is sort of catalyzed through thisese difference in the modes of production gives rise to a conflict between the landlord and the capitalist. (Refer Slide Time: 35:25) And this conflict actually emanates in the conflict between the two system.m… (Refer Slide Time: 35:29) Between monarchy and the parliamentary system. Important to understand that within the monarchical system you know there is no rule of law, the rule of law nearly comes about in a democratic setup, because of themthen the monarchical setup, I do what I want to do, I am the monarch and the laws starts froorm me, the court is held by the Emperor for any King within his own domain there could be of course, this is something that we are going to study later, the understanding of modern nation. (Refer Slide Time: 36:07) But before the birth of modern nationhood you had monarchies which could have kingdoms within it because it is the question of accepting over lordship, so even if let us say Akbar would have been the ruler, the Emperor of Hind so to say, it is not that therey would not have been kings and rulers, the local raja as would be there. Certainly even within the British Empire there were local rajas, whereas in India today, the nation state that India today is, there is no possibility of having any titular rajas in existence. So the monarchy is really a overlord, so within their domain when a certain thing, if a local rajas could also be holding courts and they would decide what they would judge a certain cases. So whenever there would be conflict it is ultimate, the ultimate judgement would be that of the monarch. Certainly there were monarch who could not be responsible for all conflicts, all disputes, there would be the local dispute resolution system, there would be the panchayat or the priests or the moulvies would undertake certain kind of justice mechanism. But the point is that each of these cases there was no clear instance of what the rule irs, the rule was more conventional first of all, it was certainly not a written document. The coming of the Constitution is a written document, they moved from oral customary sort of form of law, source of the law to a more you know a kind of a unwritten fixedtext form of law. So, this is a difference that we now enter into from oral societies to more literate and written societies. The law gets much more fixed in the form of when it enters into a written sort of form in the form of a constitution. (Refer Slide Time: 38:31) Some constitutions some nations were born with a Constitution, for example the United States is a very important example, it did not have a long (duration?) sort of without a constitution, the moment America declares independence, the moment India declares independence it is born with a constitution, a written document, a book. Whereas you know monarchies are not known to have Constitutions of their own, there are not written laws, it were laws were granted of course the rulers had to be seen to be doing justice and therefore would refer to certain conventions and while giving their judgement, while making their decisions on certain cases but they would certainly have a great degree of say over the particular. And in order to have that legitimacy, if the monarchy is someone who was not obviously looked upon as doing justice there would be rebellions against the monarch. Certainly you did not have elections to vote out the monarch but there will be a rebellion and if the monarch was completely unpopular the chances of people going andin joining the rebel would be a whole lot more. Feudal societies I mean monarchies did not rely on standing armies, standing armies become something that more identified with modern democracies, modern nation states where the army as we understand as, the army is holds its is allegiance to the nation and therefore does not participate in political activity, but within the feudal system, within monarchies there was no standing army, people would pick up arms when there is a call for defending the kingdom, you did not have nations, of course you had kingdoms and so imagine if more people were disgruntled they would take arms to defeat the king rather than to support the king. So there are various kinds of structures of loyalty that you know things were organized wrongaround and therefore the monarchy, monarch would always want to be seen as doing justice and that therefore they would have to depend on customary laws, the way conventions, the way we know the way or traditions of various kinds. So, a lot of the laws would be religious laws and the monarchies is would seek legitimacy in religion. So, therefore the monarchy certainly invested in Europe, monarchies would have important relationship with the church. The Roman Catholic Church played a very important role in the maintaining of relationship between various kingdoms in Western Europe, within the larger Europe. Iin fact,. eEven the early distribution of the Eumpire of the New World that is within the Americas was something that the Roman Catholic church, the Pope did play a very important role in that. (Refer Slide Time: 42:06) And whereas you know we would see that capitalism actually when it rises it rises through an opposition of this particular overarching religious authority, even within the Indian subcontinent we would find that places of worship become a very important tool for politics. Kings are seen to have invested a lot in developing temples, (Refer Slide Time: 42:32) and temples become a very important space for exercising the power of a particular monarchy, particular ruler or also the best place for where a lot of wealth is generated and certainly destruction of places of worship also is a feature of feudal and mediaeval forms of political practices and you know so when we see that, as capitalism rises within Western Europe, you have that authority of the Roman Catholic Church is questioned, the authority of the Roman Catholic Church is challenged and you willould see the growth of Protestantism. (Refer Slide Time: 43:26) Where the central authority of the Roman Catholic Church, of the Pope is questioned, the Protestant authority actually privileges the local, the individual or the family a whole lot more in the pursuing of religion. It’s not antireligiousanti-religious so to say but thewhen notion of what religion is and how religion, the institutional process of religion undergo a sea change in understanding in capitalism. (Refer Slide Time: 43:542) In fact in this entire period of conflict between feudalism and capitalism, at least in the early phase, the conflict is realized a lot more in the form of a conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, and Protestantism actually had various stratrends, whereas Catholicism was this large monolithic sort of paperedeople structure. There wcould be various kinds of Protestantisms which developed as a mark of more regional local challenge to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Specific monarchs did use religion in order to counter the scope of the authority of the Church and but monarchy did rely a whole lot more on religion because the king looked upon or tried to come across to the society, to his people, to his subjects as that as a representative of God on the face of the earth, that this person has a certain legitimacy so therefore always that process is a religious one. (Refer Slide Time: 45:16) You do understand that within Parliamentary processes you have the legitimacy coming from the fact that people have elected somebody and while taking oath people do show their allegiancereligions to the constitution rather than implicitly to God. (Refer Slide Time: 45:31) And so the Parliamentary, the democratic processes are much more secular than that of within the monarchy. (Refer Slide Time: 45:43) Now one of the ways in which we see this conflict between feudalism and capitalism playing out within Western Europe is over science. We find that with the growth of knowledge and we this is something that we have already studied that you know the growth of written text and printed documents, (Refer Slide Time: 46:04) with writing, and certainly with the rise of print, and an exchange of observational records and others, do lead to the escalation or the growth of science and kind toscientific knowledge. So various kinds of important scientists, Galileo or Newton, Copernicus, were all (()) (46:20) (Refer Slide Time: 46:21) They were, they lived their lives during this phase of revolutionary change that was happening and we all know what kind of fate they had to face because they challenged certain religious tenets. (Refer Slide Time: 46:39) We know about GalilioGalileo andwhen the kind of persecution that he had to undergo. Because when science questions religion and monarchs seek legitimacy in religion then science helps question the authority of the monarch, they saidy there is no special reason why we should support the monarch. Now, all these things are not are interrelated but not necessarily dependent on each other, they could be also working independently. But there are some interrelationship between each other. (Refer Slide Time: 47:24) For example the capitalists, you know they needed certain kinds of licenses. They needed the authority to work within a certain domain and in turn they needed a certain security from the government, that they needed security that their factories will not get destroyed, that their goods will be protected from competition from other goods from other lands and other kinds of productions that are happening outside the kingdom or outside the nation. And they would also need protection from the monarchy, that they did not want to be very heavily taxed and that also led to, was a cause for conflict, between the monarchy and the Parliament. (Refer Slide Time: 48:12) But at the same point of time if the monarchy if you had to question their authority of the monarch then people who are supporting liberty, equality, fraternity, they are helping question the basis on which monarchy that the monarchy stands and that is a religious basis. So questioning of religious tenets become a very important process through which this conflicts gets played out. Though not in specific ways, I mean this conflict could also play out in the form of various kinds of religious conflicts, for example within England it’s very important that in England you had the ruole of the Anglican Church which was opposed to the Papalpeople authority. (Refer Slide Time: 49:00) But the democratic movement within the Parliament, you know when the Parliamentaries do take over power for a brief while during the Civil War they were extremely religious. So, there is I mean they relied on a lot of you know very narrow soret of very puritanical practices of religion. So there is never a one-on-one sort of correspondence there are lots of variations within it which we should understand. But the larger point is that the overall take is that monarchy a resists science whereas the parliamentarians, the capitalists actually value science. Also you woulddo understand the correspondence between mechanization and in science, and growth of science and technology is something that capitalism actually thrives on. And the other point to note is feudalism upholds privilege in rank, that it ensures, it tries to show that it is something, that people are what they are defined by the birth, if you are a serf then you will die a serf, if you are a landlord you live as a landlord all your life. So, its hereditary, it’s passed on social rank, it’s passed on for generations. Whereas capitalism thrives on the idea of choice as you say. (Refer Slide Time: 50:30) Two kinds of choice, the serf has the choice to become the worker, the worker has the mobility the worker sort of determines his fate to a certain extent, his fate is to either work in this factory or that factory. But if you look at the figure of the capitalist, the capitalist is one who is making the investment, taking the risk and thereby making the possibility of profit, without that risk taking there is no earning of profit really. So, capitalism thrives of the idea of this individual taking the risk, individual moving out of traditional morves and trying something new. So, capitalism thrives on and promotes worth and social mobility. (Refer Slide Time: 51:21) So, where as feudalism says that it is on the basis of privilege and rank that a person’s worth is decided whereas within capitalist Parliamentary Democratic systems you have it that a person’s ability is becomes far more important. If I have learned something so I can acquire knowledge or I can acquire social status and not remain in the same place that we have. So, the social mobility is something that the capitalism promotes at least in its very early stages not in a later stage when capitalism really becomes predominant. But certainly it’s very early stages capitalism promotes social mobility and as something that we have already seen earlier that a large feudalism a largely oral society is promotes the idea of a corporate body, people are identified according to their communities, their races, their tribes or castes. Whereas a democratic systems, the individual is ats the centre, one person one vote, you can transfer yourself, you convert yourself from being a subject to a citizen. So these are not earth shattering changes that bring about very significant changes in the way transformations in the way human beings understand, and live their lives, go about their daily business, relate to each other. But one point that needs to be noted is none of these changes are perceptible to the specific individuals who are living through any of these 6 to 700 years. Theseis would be very slow changes, it is only with the historian’s eye that we are able to understand that these changes have taken place. If we see the way society was ordered at around the 14th or 15th centuriesy and we see other way societies are ordered at around 18th and 19th centuries, we can see the change, and wehe can also see evidence of this conflict, wethey can also see evidence of these change is happening and these changes did take place not all peacefully, they did take place some of them through very serious conflict. (Refer Slide Time: 53:532) The French Revolution for example is a very important example and there were others similar revolutions all across Europe and where a direct conflict in different ideas which rules feudal world and the capitalist world. (Refer Slide Time: 54:09) And finally I leave you with this image, this idea of various kinds of basic identifiable sort of hero features of modern society which we can identify with capitalism you know, urbanization, democracy, industry, a standing army, nationalism, print, you know and particular forms like novels or the role of individuals within society, the role of science, the growth of science that takes place within this particular. These are some fundamental tenets of a modern society and the period that we will be dealing with now which is between let us say for Western Europe between let us say the 16th or very late 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuriesy, 16th and 17th centuriesy is is really the principal focus, it can be termed as the early modern society. Another important point, another important feature of this kind of modern society is also colonialism, colonialism and imperialism become also very important offshoot of our capitalist society, but more about that in our future lectures. Thank you.  Text, Textuality and Digital media Professor Arjun Ghosh Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Lecture 9 Febvre and Martin: The Discovery of Printing & The Chinese Precedent Welcome to today’s lecture after having looked at oral forms of communication oral techniques of representation and then the manuscript, the form in which the communication happens. Today we will look at the coming of print. Now just to reiterate what I have been maintaining and from the words of Marshall McLuhan “The medium is the message” that is no matter what we say- that of course is important- but what is also important is how we say it. Because there are two aspects to this, one is that the medium itself, the manner in which a story or some idea is communicated has an influence on what is being communicated. As we have seen that within orality you use more verse and rhythmic patterns a lot more which is not really a matter of choice, similarly when you write a diary entry or when you write an essay the form itself limits what you can tell through the particular form. And the other point is, that the way it is received, the way a certain communication is received for example if a person sends an official letter that will be received with a certain level of seriousness whereas the same person communicating the same idea through a message on WhatsApp will perhaps not be taken in a similar kind of seriousness. Sometimes WhatsApp messages are taken too seriously and that makes it even more dangerous. We will discuss about the social media and the coming of the digital media towards the end of this course. But the point being reiterated that how we say it how a certain thing is communicated to us is something of great importance and in this course we are paying a lot of importance to that, to understanding that. So the coming of print as we have been discussing marks a very important watershed, a very important revolutionary change that comes about in human history really. We have already seen how the coming of writing, the alphabet and the mechanisms of writing already made a certain degree of change in the way people live their lives and people went about relating to each other and organization of society. In our previous class we looked at the coming of capitalism and how capitalist processes are very different from the processes of feudalism. And we looked at how there is a total change, almost in every facet of life. It’s an all-encompassing change that takes place with the coming of capitalism really. So with that background we enter into this discussion on the discovery of the coming of printing. I think the word the coming of printing might be a better idea, better way to talk about, a different way really of talking about this particular historical event. Now when I say discovery it would almost mean that it would stress the fact that it wasn’t there and it was something that was created by human beings. Whereas if I say the coming of print it is as if print came about on its own the truth really lies in between the two. Whenever we associate commonsensically the coming of the print and the discovery of printing and therefore the discovery of the printing machine one name really comes before us and that is that of Johannes Gutenberg who was really someone who was in Western Europe primarily in the area around Germany and the date that is given is around the 1460s. However what today’s discussion is going to tell us is that, it is probably not a correct idea that Gutenberg discovered the printing press because the change being however revolutionary was not brought about by one individual. It was something that came about due to the requirement of the times, I would like to refer you back to our lecture where Raymond Williams discusses technology in the context of television, where we say that the idea that we subscribe to is technology is a product of social innovation and a result of historical means and requirements in historical changes. This is of course the view of technological determinism, that technology brings about certain changes, that is also true but I think the truth really lies between them and perhaps a little bit more in terms of that certain technology comes about because of certain changes that have already happened within the society and the discovery of that technology becomes imperative and therefore people start looking for it. As one says, necessity is the mother of invention. (Refer Slide Time: 6:56) So it is only when human beings feel the need or necessity for something that they would try to innovate and then reach to that particular invention. So what were the conditions that really gave shape to the discovery of printing? Printing was discovered around the first half of the fifteenth century at least that is what is the date that has been given by most historical records. The need for technology which is similar to printing was something that really comes about in the preceding centuries. Now in our discussion of the various manuscript techniques elimination, inscription, so we discussed how the need for making scribal copies of books increases through history, through a certain period of time as we have discussed that in the first millennia within Western Europe really the printing really. In the first millennia you had the need for manuscripts really coming through the scribal agents within the ecclesiastical authorities that the need for Christian monks and Roman Catholic Church to spread the idea of Christianity across Europe makes monasteries possible and the need for communicating ideas assumes a greater degree of importance and therefore scribal records writing becomes important. However, just manual writing would have sufficed. If a certain monastery did not have a particular manuscript someone can travel to a particular monastery where that manuscript record is there and could make a copy of it and take it back. It was a slow process and therefore in history you would find such manuscripts very rare because the production also was rare, you didn’t have a situation where there would be hundreds of copies of a particular text it would only be a handful- if at all in double digits- that there would be copies of these various texts. However as we move towards the turn of the millennium and in the early part of the second millennium that is around 11th, 12th and early 13th centuries by then you have the growth of education that due to certain changes that were coming about within the society you had the scope of education increasing and including amongst this, the laity or the common people who are outside the purview of the ecclesiastical authorities or the church authorities. So you had a slow movement towards secularization of education though I would say the education was not yet so much secular but the fact that the Scriptures and the ideas, the philosophical texts would now be studied by laity, by people still within more well-to-do class not really some kind of universal education mechanism that’s a much later concept, several 100 years we will have to wait for the formal schooling systems and increase in mass literacy and something that comes about only when the industrial era really takes shape by about the 18th century. But still in the 12th and 13th centuries, 14th century really, education spreads outside the monasteries and the church and you have the setting up of the first universities. Now what we need to remember is that though these universities were there in Europe at that point of time they were still not studying texts in the vernacular languages. The development of vernacular languages still will take some more time and print will play a very important role in it. We will discuss that in a future lecture. The principal languages which were the mode of scholarly communication at that point of time- learning and writing- was the classical languages which is Latin and Greek. What is important for us to note is that the nature of classical languages as opposed to the vernacular languages. So classical languages are available, are accessible only to a certain elite but among that elite, across various territories across Europe, there would be therefore communication that is possible. Whereas these classical languages were differentiated from the language of everyday issues which would be slowly taking the shape of what is present day English or German or French or Italian you would still have very different kinds of languages and dialects for example there will be Scott and Welsh and Gaelic and other languages which are there in various pockets of Europe and this is very similar to the Indian situation if you do understand. Though English is not a classical language in India in the Indian context really if you look at classical languages you will have to look at Sanskrit and Pali and these kinds of languages which are not living languages, so it’s a difficult example for us to give. But if we for a moment we imagine English as a classical language, it is a language that links all of India. Even Hindi as a language does not really connect every part of India, English does. But English is a language of the elite, it connects the elite of various states of India, various provinces of India. But if you look at the vernacular languages that is Bangla or Oriya or Assamese or Tamil and Telugu then these are languages which are local and these are language which are horizontal which are spoken by people across the board in that particular locality, in that particular province or state, that particular region. So that’s the concept of the horizontal that it is across class. Whereas the vertical is where only people of the elite are connected across regions. So India’s situation, India is almost a mini continent, so it’s a very apt sort of situation to what was there in early modern Europe really and so for us to understand that what the condition was in early modern Europe we can look at the example of India. We will return to these questions of language and specifically to the question of language within the Indian subcontinent later on in the course and print plays a very very important role through the various eras in that but more about that later. So returning to the late mediaeval Europe, we see the coming of learning but this learning is primarily in Greek and Latin. So what I’m trying to tell you is that though there are universities it does not mean that there is some kind of a universal education that everybody in the society has an opportunity to study, no it doesn’t. The doors of the university are open only to a certain elite section of the population who come in for certain kind of education which they need for various purposes in life. But it is certainly an exponential growth from the education or the learning or the scholarship that existed only within the Ecclesiastical domain within the first millennia in Europe. The situation within the Indian subcontinent as we looked at in our lecture on Indian manuscripts was slightly different because within India you had these centers of learning, these manuscripts were not only possessed by ecclesiastical authorities there were also these kind of structures through which centers of learning had come into existence. But within these centers of learning whether it be in Nalanda or other similar kind of institutions, the learning itself was open primarily to a very very small section miniscule section of the population. But certainly the learning did have a certain secular character even outside and existed outside of religious practices that is something that comes to Europe only by about the late mediaeval age that is the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. But what happens is that, now there are all these people who are coming to the universities to study texts. (Refer Slide Time: 17:51) And therefore there is a need for texts, there becomes a greater need for texts. Now there has to be mechanisms of sharing texts. So two things happen, one is the mechanism of sharing the text comes about with the birth of the library these universities now start developing libraries. (Refer Slide Time: 18:16) Libraries are of course institutions where more sharing of texts become possible and these manuscripts would often be as we looked at the processes of manuscript production that these manuscripts, would be bulky and they would be prepared customized or be commissioned really and they would mostly be pretty bulky. (Refer Slide Time: 18:43) And so there would be situations where these libraries would have to ensure that nobody I mean these texts are not misplaced in any way. So there would also be situations where books would be put on racks and be chained to the library rack and you read it there, you consult it there, you sit there or stand there and consult that particular book, that particular volume. So libraries become a very important way of sharing of texts for the scholarship. However scholars would often like to have personal copies of specific treatises and texts for their own record and for their own concentration because they need it. So sometimes a certain book let’s say your specific textbooks you would like to have a copy of whereas there are a certain book which you just need to consult fleetingly or for a certain period of time you would perhaps rely on a library to refer to it. What becomes important is that process of copying. Now for a scholar to sit down and copy an entire volume together would be time-consuming this is what would have been a very important mark of scholarship in the early mediaeval period where one of the scholarly tasks would be to make copies of manuscripts and only scholars could make copies of manuscripts because they will have to be able to decipher what is written there, understand what is written there and sometimes make intelligent, important interventions and changes into those manuscripts in order to be able to really make sense of it because remember these manuscripts would be travelling across time. So every several hundred years or so or even for a lesser period of time a certain text might need to with some philosophical ideas may be challenged and they may need to be rewritten within that current context and therefore there would be topical or other interventions that would take place and the scholar is well equipped to bring about that particular change. So in the early mediaeval period one aspect of scholarship was the copying of a manuscript and this was really a continuation of the oral domain where the aspect of scholarship was to actually memorize and repeat and keep the knowledge going by that repetition, keep the memory going by the repetitive utterance of a certain tract and that is something that really carries on into the manuscript domain where the scholarship exercise is that of repetition. The reputation or the rewriting of manuscripts itself is a scholarly exercise but with the growth of learning and really with the holding of manuscript culture, that task of repetition has become superfluous, has become vestigial this is no longer really necessary because the knowledge can be for a moment manuscript is the mnemonic for that knowledge and you do not need to spend the time keeping it going. So scholarship would now try to engage with more texts, more ideas instead of trying to spend the time in copying. So therefore now there would be professional copiers. So as I told you while we discussed the production of manuscripts there would be the booksellers or the stationers who would actually do this task of copying books. So typically what would happen is that sometimes the bookseller would have a particular master copy of a particular book and when a scholar comes and orders a certain copy, they would pull out that specimen and ask the scribes to make a copy of it. And it would of course be customized, the kind of illustrations that they might want, the size of the paper or the parchment and the cover and gilding and everything would be decided. But that process too where the scholar is not engaged in the copying but a certain scribe is doing it of course there would be certain minimum qualification for the scribe. The scribe would need to know Latin and Greek, know the language well enough to understand the words and make the copy but they are not the most learned people within the society, really. Just to give you a comparison it is as much learning that a typist needs to have to be able to type without much of a-- or the job of a stenographer or there might be someone who is very important functionary- an officer- who does not have time to type out their own letters or their own documents, they dictate and the scribe notes it down or some notes have to be made, it is the job of the stenographer to do it. Similarly the scribe in the late mediaeval era would be someone who would have some minimum knowledge, working knowledge of the language and the texts and they would write out or copy out the manuscripts that are required and would supply it to the scholars and the scholar meanwhile can therefore use their time to engage with many more texts. Now we see how this kind of professionalization of scribal copying sort of enables the scholar to consult more texts or engage their time more productively which was would not have been possible before this particular era. And moment you are looking at several texts and consulting more and more texts you are making space for the interplay of ideas because do understand that previous to this you did not have within the oral domain you did not have the possibility of someone comparing couple of several ideas together. (Refer Slide Time: 26:03) The movement of knowledge was tied to the person, it was embodied form of knowledge, it was not some form of knowledge that could travel without the body. It is only when knowledge can travel without the body of the knower that it is possible for the scholars to engage with ideas that are coming across from various ideas and that leads to the development of scientific ideas. (Refer Slide Time: 26:34) Because one of the techniques of science is to ensure that you test out a certain hypothesis in several contexts and only when it is proved in several contexts that you take that to be a maxim. You take that hypothesis to be a kind of a law. So these kind of techniques actually lead to the growth of rationality and reason. (Refer Slide Time: 27:05) However returning to the act of scribal copying even this process where a copy of a particular book is being copied down by a particular scribe is through the centuries seems to be slow and does not satisfy the need. (Refer Slide Time: 27:30) The speed at which the book has to be prepared or the copy has to be prepared becomes a greater imperative. So therefore now you have situations where certain booksellers, some enterprising booksellers, what they would do is, when the scholar comes in with a certain manuscript to be copied, they would first UN-seam it, they would first remove the binding, the stitching of the binding and take out the gatherings and distribute the gathering among various scribes who would then copy out those gatherings and then both the original and the copy would be put together and you have a copy at a much faster rate. At a much quicker rate. It is almost like these, if you speak to somebody who would use the photocopy machine some 30 years ago or even 25 years ago they would print at a much slower rate. You would get maybe 5 or 6 or 10 copies per minute. Now you get up to there are machines which would be able to make photocopies up to 70-80 pages per minute which is at a much faster rate. You now have very very efficient photocopy machines which are able to sort the pages out themselves even photocopy books by turning the pages by itself this speeds up, mechanizes and automates and speeds up the entire process. So the more the demand for the texts the greater the demand for the speed at which printing happens and the more number of copies. And the importance of having more number of copies is, also let’s say a certain scholar comes in with a certain very important rare manuscript, the bookseller would like to make more copies of that book because there could be a certain clientele for it. He would like to make some more money out of copying that book or selling that book. Also if a certain idea suddenly becomes currency, there is a greater demand for a particular book and you have to meet that demand. In order to meet that demand you have to speed up the process of the production of that particular book. Now what we are moving towards is really what we saw within our discussion on capitalism of this process of mechanization. We are moving from kind of a slow manual form of manufacture to a mechanized form of manufacture which will produce mass goods, which will create more and more products. The book now becomes a certain product and the book now caters to a certain market. It is no longer an object of individual use. (Refer Slide Time: 30:23) It becomes an object which is to be sold in the market and a profit can be generated. You already see certain pro to-capitalist models of functioning that come into being and the bookseller by trade is trying to engage with these chain circumstances within which human life and human trade in commerce is developing and therefore now very clearly this process of speeding up of creation of copies, one tries to create a situation, look for ways in which one can speed it up further because manual copying is something that is a slower process. Now what is important to note when we say it is the discovery of printing, what we’re looking at is really the discovery of or the invention of text, printing of texts because printing of images is something that is older it did exist in history where printing of images on cloth, on textiles is something that had been in existence for many centuries previous to the printing press were the textual printing takes place. (Refer Slide Time: 31:54) Printing of alphabet takes place in fact the Chinese have been printing for a very very long period of time. (Refer Slide Time: 32:09) And therefore within the creation of texts this kind of printing is something that it did exist for printing of illustrations. The illustrations would be, this process of illustrating manuscripts was mechanized to a certain extent. (Refer Slide Time: 32:29) Though it was printing by hand- a certain xylo graph or a woodcut would be used to sort of make an impression of the drawing on the page and then maybe it would be colored or illustrated in a certain way by hand. (Refer Slide Time: 32:49) But that process was speed ed up. In fact it would so happen that scribes would be writing out manuscripts and we saw how in the manuscript tradition it’s actually the writing of the text that happens first and detailed instructions are left for the illustrator as to what, even the illuminator for the kind of illustrations and (()) (33:18) that they’re going to fill up within the blank spaces that are there. So the text actually gets framed pretty densely even before the manuscript reaches the illustrator. So the illustrator’s task is pretty much restricted to what has been envisaged already. However this tradition of leaving a blank space for the illustration now gets taken up by leaving-- that blank space is then used to actually take a woodcut and actually make an impression with an ink and the drawing is ready in very very quickly. And so therefore you would have situations where manuscripts in the words the written text would differ from volume to volume but the illustrations would be very much similar. Because each volume is getting customized, so in a certain volume the illustration may occur on page number 33 but in another volume it might appear on page number 36 depending on what kind of font has been used, how many illustrations have been put but the illustration actually would look almost identical. So we need to remember that there was a process of mechanizing illustrations much earlier than the process of mechanizing the printing of the written text and really the innovation that was involved was to actually bring about that process of printing in the written text. I will briefly talk about the difficulties that are there in that is that (Refer Slide Time: 35:20) When the printing happened by hand, so they would create these dyes to punch a dye onto-- sometimes these blocks would be metallic and the punch would be made on a softer metal with a harder metal and there would be many more copies of that particular punch which would be there and one of the very important professions which made heyday at these point of times were goldsmiths and those who were engravers, who would engrave coins and other such medallions and other things which was an ancient profession. But they come into a new kind of use now because this creation of illustration on metal or even on woodcut is something that requires a certain intricate task of carving, certain dexterity of the hand, certain expertise which goldsmiths would have had, those who would make jewelry and they become very very important because that is the kind of professional expertise that also leads Johannesburg Gutenberg to create the printing press that really is there. Now it’s one thing to actually use blocks for printing illustrations, it’s another thing to use blocks to print entire pages because you know it’s not that it was not used, people did experiment with it that the entire page, to compose it, it’s a lot of carving. Carving each letter out on a block of wood or a piece of metal is not an easy task. Whereas making one illustration, a single illustration in a certain text there would be a certain number of illustrations. In illustrations you’re looking at lines, straight lines and the colour would be really filled in by hand whereas creating an entire page full of text would be extremely time-consuming and after that, that block cannot be used any further. And so the amount of time that goes into-- Whereas illustrations can be reused across volumes. Let us say if you have to look at illustrations of a dragon then the dragon could be there in multiple narratives. So the printer has lots of blocks around, they can use that block to put the picture of a dragon in. A quick titbit here, a kind of an aside here, so you know of this term called the stereotype. Just think about for moment what is the meaning of stereotype in your mind? I will give you 10 seconds. Stereotype really is an idea that we sort of think of as some straitjacketing a definition that if you have to think about a jealous person or a greedy person, you are stereotyping a certain social definition. You are sort of fixing a certain social definition on a certain community of people. So you are stereotyping the way a certain community behaves. I’m desperately trying not to give illustrations because sometimes it might be pejorative. So we say “okay he is from this region, so therefore all people from this region are like this, they are money minded or they are stupid or they eat this or they wear this”. This is the kind of stereotype that we have, that’s the cultural definition but this word stereotype actually emerges from this tradition of printing. Where, as I said, if you had to get the picture of a dragon, all dragons would look the same. That is why the idea, the type its a stereotype. A certain typeset which is used for a certain particular object. You need the picture of an elephant, there is one elephant that gets printed everywhere, that is the origin, historically, of the term, stereotype, do go and check a little bit more about the history of this term stereotype, it is very-very interesting I must assure you. Returning to our discussion of print. The point was that the page, a written text was made up of many many movable letters and it was very unstable. And if you did not actually make an entire block of the print, people did try to create individual alphabets or individual words and then put it together and they did not master the technique. They did not figure out how to hold the words, so many blocks but they have to be all printed together, how do you put it all together? It was a very-very difficult task and people were not able to do it. They were trying, there were limited successes and sometimes they would try to use a single mould for the whole page and it was something that was difficult, they would not be able to do it. (Refer Slide Time: 41:20) So this kind of experimentation went on throughout Europe and through various enterprising individuals across the continent and therefore there was a certain secrecy involved in this process because the person who is able to do it best would then be able to capture the entire market, will have a certain monopoly. So these were kind of trade secrets that would be there but even within the trade secrets, words they would keep getting (Refer Slide Time: 41:59) It would keep getting passed on, knowledge would keep getting passed on. It wasn’t an easy era because you still didn’t have the development of science, people did not know exactly how to communicate these ideas but what would happen is, as I said in an earlier class, that this was a period of time when various kinds of artisan-AL activity would have grown because you’re moving more towards mass production and therefore within a certain workshop, within a certain artisan-AL space there would be a master artisan, a master painter or someone and within them they would have certain apprentices. These apprentices would learn the trade but then they would go away after having learned that trade and therefore the trade would pass on. So over generations a certain practice would spread. So within Western Europe there were variou