--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@...> wrote:

> I thought printing came to most of India with the Brits.

"TAMIL types had been used to print Doctrina Christam in
Coolegio do Saluador at Cochin in 1578. Some years earlier in
Lisbon, a Cartilha, or Christian Catichism, had been
translitereated and printed in 1554. Those are known facts. The
interest in this discussion is the influence of the printed Tamil
language books from Madras shops-and not the history of
printing or of printed books. "

http://www.intamm.com/l-science/smith.htm

I found a reference on this page

http://www.colonialvoyage.com/biblioP.html

to the first Tamil book printed in India in 1578. It also includes
references to Tamil books printed about the same time in
Portugal. I think Francis Xavier spent some time in India or Sri
Lanka as well.

Then there is the work of Athanasius Kircher, also a Jesuit,
1650's, - it looks like he had a font for devanangari. I am a little
fuzzy on this so I will just mention one more name as another
good lead. Constantine Beschi, a Portuguese Jesuit,
standardized the Tamil writing system in the early 1700's. He
brought the pulli back into use and by using a long vowel marker
added two more rows to the syllabary.

I have just picked up a few leads so far.

Found it! This link says that the Jesuits started the first printing
press in India in 1556. My distinct impression is that they were
not printing the roman alphabet because these things are
always refered to as 'contributions' to India or Tamil literature or
whatever.

http://www.goethals.org/jesuitssn.htm

Suzanne