Panchanan - A project for digitalisation of first Bengali typeface created by Panchanan Karmakar

mitradranirban

Panchanan Karmakar (Mallick) (died c. 1804) was an Indian Bengali inventor, born at Tribeni, Hooghly, Bengal Presidency, British India. He assisted Sir Charles Wilkins in creating the first Bangla typeface in 1778. It was used for printing A Grammar of Bengali Language by Nathaniel Brassey Halhed.

Later in 1799 he left East India Company Press and joined Missionary Press in Serampore, where along with Bengali he also developed type in 14 languages, including Arabic, Persian, Marathi, Telegu, Burmese and Chinese. He made the Serampore Missionary press the largest multiscript foundry in Asia in early 19th Century. He also trained the next generation of punch-cutters, pioneering the typographic legacy in India.

I created a open source project for creating a OpenType version  of the world's first Bangla Typeface - as a  tribute to Panchanan Karmakar .

The font file is available at its website and source is available at  our github page 

Things I learned while working on this project

- When I use Bengali opaque conjuncts (like ka-ta  ) along with alternate transparent conjuncts  (like  ) , and vertically stacked conjuncts like ma-pa  as well as horizontal or “half form – full form” conjuncts like  in the same typeface, it is not an aberration, or 21st Century simplification , but a part of almost 250 year old Typographic legacy of Bengali script.

- Some letters like nna  and la  have exchanged there shapes with time, and can be confusing to modern day Bengali reader.

- Some conjuncts were so different looking, that I would not have been able to decipher them unless roman transliteration was accompanying them.

Examples include ja-nya  ( ), ka-ukaar ( ) , ma-ukaar ( ) , ta-ya( ) , ha-ya ( ).

- That like Arabic, some Bengali conjuncts like ssa-ukaar had a separate initial and final form .

I have deliberately not included western punctuation like comma, semicolon, etc as they were introduced for Bengali text only in 1855 by Iswarchandra Vidyasagar.

I do not know where this typeface will be useful. I hope it will stimulate newer designs in Bengali typographic scenario, which is  boringly dominated by descendants and copies of a single typeface for almost 50 years.