(a) Explain the features of manuscript found in India before the advent of printing culture.

(i) India had a very rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages.

(ii) Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper.

(iii) Pages were sometimes beautifully illustrated.

(iv) They would be either pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation.

(v) Manuscripts continued to be produced till well after the introduction of print, down to the late nineteenth century.

(vi) Manuscripts, however, were highly expensive and fragile.

(vii) They had to be handled carefully, and they could not be read easily as the script was written in different styles.

(b)How did the advent of print culture affect the poor people in India? Explain.

(i) Very cheap small books were brought to markets in 19th Century in Madras towns and sold at crossroads, allowing poor people travelling to markets to buy them.

(ii) Public libraries were set up from the early twentieth century, expanding the access to books.

(iii) These libraries were located mostly in cities and towns, and at times in prosperous villages.

(iv) For rich local patrons, setting up a library was a way of acquiring prestige.

(v) From the late nineteenth century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in many printed tracts and essays.

(vi) Jyotiba Phule wrote about the injustices of the caste system in his Gulamgiri ($\displaystyle 1871$).

(vii) In the twentieth century, B.R. Ambedkar in Maharashtra and E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker in Madras, better known as Periyar, wrote powerfully on caste and their writings were read by people all over India.

(viii) Local protest movements and sects also created a lot of popular journals and tracts criticizing ancient scriptures and envisioning a new and just future.

(ix) Workers in factories were too overworked and lacked the education to write much about their experiences.

(x) But Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in $\displaystyle 1938$ to show the links between caste and class exploitation.

(xi) The poems of another Kanpur millworker, who wrote under the name of Sudarshan Chakra between $\displaystyle 1935$ and $\displaystyle 1955$, were brought together and published in a collection called Sacchi Kavitayan.