Page 229 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

226 ART AND CRAFTS

were also sold. However, after the origin of the printing industry, according to
Chittaranjan Bandopadhyaya, the first Bengali almanac was published in 1818. In this
almanac there was only one picture. If we observe closely, we will find that the
68
Bengali almanac derived its content from two sources. The first one is the traditional
hand-written almanac consisting of days, hours, lunar days, stars, astronomy etc. The
second one is the English almanac consisting of dates and years as well as information
on ebb and tide, government offices, market price, list of officials etc. Postal charges,
railway fare, agriculture, major diseases and the remedies were also found in these
almanacs. These served as a kind of encyclopedia for daily use for the householder
Bengali. Even though there was no interest in illustrating these almanacs in the
beginning, eventually pictures were added to make them attractive. Notun Panjika
published from Serampore Chandradoy Press is an ideal for this kind of almanacs (fig.
4.27). The founder of Chadradoy Press is Manohar Karmakar—son-in-law of
Panchanan Karmaker. Notun Panjika was published with illustrations of gods and
goddesses engraved by his son Krishnachandra Karmakar. Many Bengali almanacs
took the pictures of gods and goddesses published in Chandradoy Press as an ideal.
Many half almanacs or pocket-almanacs were published with illustrations. Other than
these, there were Christian almanacs, Mohammedan almanacs, full almanacs,
directory almanacs etc. Another feature of these almanacs was that they published
advertisements of books, some of which were illustrated. The role of Bat-tala’s
engraving artists in the publication and illustration of Bengali almanacs other than
Chandradoy Press of Serampore is undeniable. A dozen different types of Bengali
almanacs were sent in the international exhibition in Paris in 1867. 69
Although a large number of almanacs were published from Kolkata, no significant
publication can be found from Dhaka or East Bengal compared to that. Muntasir
Mamun assumes that as almanacs published from Kolkata dominated the market, it
was not feasible to publish them from East Bengal. 70
But Satyanarayan Sukul’s Naba Diary published from Sherpur deserves special
mention. It is mentioned in the Bengal Library catalogue, ‘This is a blank diary with
both English and Bengali dates; perhaps the first publication of its kind in Bengali’. 71
These days, different government and private organizations publish different types of
diaries. Besides days, dates and other important information, we cannot ignore their
aesthetic value. Usually on the cover of the diary published for an organization, we
find the year and the name of the organization mentioned. In some diaries, there are
maps and photographs of important architecture, archaeological sites or places worth
seeing. Some other diaries are designed based on a concept or theme. Some use prints
of paintings and drawings.
The concept of the calendar that first comes to our mind is the wall calendar. The exact
date of its inception is not known but it can be assumed that there is a close connection
between the popular trend of prints in the middle of the 19th century and wall
calendars. The Bat-tala prints, poster size prints of Annada Bagchi’s Calcutta Art