Alessandro Graheli's paper "The Choice of Devanāgarī" in the Festschrift
for Dominik Wujastyk contains very valuable historical data on
Devanagari (and other Indian) typefaces, even though the paper in itself
is not mainly about history, but about rationales for choosing latin
script or Devanagari in contemporary editions.
Graheli does not give a specific date for the creation of Devanagari
typefaces at the Nirnaya Sagar Press (perhaps there is none), but it
would definitely have been in the late 19th century (the press was
founded in 1869).
Naik 1971 seems to be the publication to look at:
Naik, B. S. (1971). Typography of Devanagari. Bombay: Directorate of
Languages.
Best regards, Birgit Kellner
Am 11.05.25 um 19:39 schrieb Harry Spier via INDOLOGY:
*External Ema he *: please use links and attachments from trusted
sources only
Thank you Madhav and Andrew,
From the Adishila font webpage given by Andrew Ollett
https://adishila.com/fonts/
*Adishila Samskrta:* The font design is exact trace of Nirnay Sagar
Press books without modification.
*Adishila:* The font design is inspired by Vanivilas Press Srirangam.
* Adishila Dev*: The font design is inspired by Nirnay Sagar Press
books.as <http://books.as> footnote fonts or title fonts.
So the fonts exist to simulate the typefaces of some of the major
devanagari publishers of the early 20th century . Do we know when the
Nirnaya Sagar Press started producing its typeface. Was it sometime in
the 19th century or is that too early?
Thanks,
Harry Spier
On Sun, May 11, 2025 at 9:25 AM Andrew Ollett
<[email protected]> wrote:
This has come up before on this list, but:
https://adishila.com/fonts/
On Sun, May 11, 2025, 3:20 PM Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY
<[email protected]> wrote:
The Nirnaya Sagar Press had its own type foundry. They were
preceded in this task by another press in Mumbai run by Ganpat
Krishnaji. The Bombay government under the British started
publishing Devanagari tracts perhaps using fonts made by some
Bengal outfit.
While designing my Madhushree [pre-Unicode] font, I had tried
to copy the Nirnaya Sagar font. Now perhaps Sanskrit2003 font
comes close to Nirnaya Sagar.
Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies,
Bangalore, India
[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]
On Sat, May 10, 2025 at 5:32 PM Harry Spier via INDOLOGY
<[email protected]> wrote:
I meant to write:
Dear list members,
Would anyone know:
1) Did the larger early 20th century Indian publishers
such as Vidya Vlas Press, Nirnaya-sagar press, and others
use the same typeface to typeset their publications, or
did each publisher have its own unique typeface.
2) Has anyone made a modern unicode font to mirror the
typeface used by Nirnaya-sagar press.
Thanks,
Harry Spier
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--
------------
Prof. Birgit Kellner, Ph.D., w.M.
Institut für Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Dominikanerbastei 16
1010 Wien
Tel.: +43-(0)1-51581-6420
Prof. Birgit Kellner, Ph.D., f.M.
Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Dominikanerbastei 16
A-1010 Vienna
Austria
Phone: +43-(0)1-51581-6420
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