CBSE Class 10 Social Science Print Culture and Modern World Assignment Set D

Short Answer Questions

Question. Explain any three features of handwritten manuscripts before the age of print in India?
Answer: • They were copied on palm leaves or on handmade papers.
• Pages were beautifully illustrated.
• They were pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation.
• Manuscripts were available in vernacular languages.
• Highly expensive & fragile.
• They could not read easily as the script was written in different styles.
• They were not widely used in everyday life.

Question. Why did the wood block method become popular in Europe?
Answer: • Production of handwritten manuscripts could not meet the ever increasing demand for books.
• Copying was an expensive, laborious and time consuming business.
• The manuscripts were fragile, awkward to handle and could not be carried around or read easily .
• By the early 15th century, woodblocks started being widely used in Europe to print textiles, playing cards and religious pictures with simple, brief texts.

Question. What was the role of new ’visual image ‘culture in printing in India?
Answer: • At the end of the 19th century a new visual culture had started.
• With the increasing number of printing presses visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies.
• Painters like Raja Ravi Varma produced images for mass circulation.
• Cheap prints and calendars were brought even by the poor to decorate the walls of their houses.

Question. Print popularized the ideas of the enlightenment thinkers “.Explain .
Answer: • Collectively the writings of thinkers provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism.
• Scholars and thinkers argued for the rule of reason rather than custom and demanded that everything to be judged through the application of reason and rationality.
• They attacked the sacred authority of the church and the despotic power of the state thus eroding the legitimacy of a social order based on tradition .
• The writing of Voltaire and Rousseau was read widely and those who read these books saw the world through new eyes, eyes that were questioning critical and rational.

Question. Describe any three factors which contributed to the development of print technology.
Answer: • Handwritten manuscripts could not meet the increasing demand for books
• Manuscripts were fragile, difficult handle
• Wood block printing, brought from China gradually became more popular.
• Johann Gutenberg developed the first -known printing in 1430s

Long Answer Questions

Question. How print revolution led to the development of reading mania in Europe .
Answer: • As literacy and schools spread in European countries there was a virtual reading mania.
• A new forms of popular literature appeared to target new readers
• There were ritual calendars along with ballads and folk tales.
• In England penny chapbooks were carried by petty peddlers known as Chapman and sold for a Penny, so that even the poor could buy them.
• In France these low priced books were called Bibliotheque Bleue as they were bound in cheap blue covers.
• There were romances, histories, books of various sixes, serving developed to combine information on current affairs with entertainment.
• Periodical pressed developed to combine information on current affairs with entertainment.
• The idea of scientists and scholars had now become more accessible to the common people.

Question. How did oral culture enter print and how was the printed material transmitted orally? Explain
Answer: Oral culture entered print into the following ways –
• Printers published popular ballads and folktales .
• Books were profusely illustrated with pictures .Printed material was transmitted orally in the following ways .
• These were sung at gatherings in villages, taverns and in towns .
• They were recited in public gatherings .

Question. Explain the impact of print on Indian women .
Answer: • Writers started writing about the lives and features of women and this increased the number of women readers.
• Women writers wrote their own autobiography. They highlighted the condition of women, their ignorance and how they forced to do hard domestic labour.
• A large section of Hindu writing was devoted to the education of women.
• In the early 20th century the journals written by women become very popular in which women’s education, widowhood, widow remarriage was discussed.
• Many writers published how to teach women to be obedient wives.

Question. By the end of the 19th century a new visual culture was taking shape .Write any three features of this new visual culture .
Answer: • Visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies.
• Printers produced images for mass circulation cheap prints and calendars could be brought even by the poor.
• By the 1870’s caricatures and cartoons were being published in journals and newspapers.
• Mass production of cost and visual images reduced the cost of production. So cheap prints and calendars were available in the market even for the poor to decorate the walls of their homes.

Question. Many Historians have argued that print culture created the conditions within which the French Revolution occurred ‘.Explain .
Answer: • The print popularized the ideas of the enlightened thinkers who attacked the authority of the church and the despotic power of the state.
• The print created a new culture of dialogue and debate and the public become aware of reasoning. They recognized the need to question the existing ideas and beliefs.
• The literature of 1780’s mocked the royalty and criticized their morality and the existing social order. This literature led to the growth of hostile
• Sentiments against.

Question. Give reasons for the following :
a .Woodblock print only came to Europe after 1295 .
Answer: Marco Polo returned to Italy from China and brought with him the knowledge of woodblock printing .

b. Martin Luther was in favour of print and spoke out in praise of it .
Answer: Martin Luther‘s criticism of Roman Catholic Church reached a large section of masses because of print .Hence he was in favour of print and spoke out in praise of it .

c. The Roman Catholic Church began keeping an Index of Prohibited books from the mid-sixteenth century .
Answer: Because of print new interpretation of Bible reached to people and they started questioning the authority of church .Due to this the Roman Catholic Church began keeping and index of Prohibited books from the mid – sixteenth century .

d.Gandhiji said the fight for Swaraj is a fight for liberty of speech, liberty of the press, and freedom of association .
Answer: The power of the printed word is most often seen in the way governments seek to regulate and suppress print .The colonial government kept continuous track of all books and newspapers published in India and passed numerous laws to control the press .Because of this Gandhi said the fight for Swaraj is a fight for liberty of speech, liberty of the press, and freedom of association .

Question. Write short notes to show what you know about :
a.The Gutenberg Press
Answer: Gutenberg was the son of a merchant and grew up on a large agricultural estate .From his childhood he had seen wine and olive presses .Subsequently, he learnt the art of polishing stones, became a master goldsmith, and also acquired the expertise to create lead moulds used for making trinkets .Drawing on this knowledge, Gutenberg adapted existing technology to design his innovation .The olive press provided the model for the printing press, and moulds were used for casting the metal types for the letters of the alphabet .By 1448, Gutenberg perfected the system .The first book he printed was the Bible .About 180 copies were printed and it took three years to produce them .By the standards of the time this was fast production .

b. Erasmus‘s idea of the printed book
Answer: Erasmus thought that books were not good for sanctity of scholastic knowledge .He was of the opinion that printed books would glut the market with contents which will do more harm than good to society .Because of this the value of good content would be lost in the din.

c .The Vernacular Press Act
Answer: In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed, modeled on the Irish Press Laws .It provided the government with extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular press .From now on the government kept regular track of the vernacular newspapers published in different provinces .When a report was judged as seditious, the Newspaper was warned, and if the warning was ignored, the press was liable to be seized and the printing machinery confiscated .

Question. What did the spread of print culture in nineteenth century India mean to :
a. Women
Answer: Because of printing technique books became cheaper .Many hawkers started selling books from door to door .This created easy availability of books for majority of women .Apart from this many liberal males encouraged women from their families to read .Novels contained interesting descriptions of women‘s lives .This created interest among women readers .Women, who were earlier cocooned inside their homes, could now know about the outside world thanks to the print technology .This created a spurt of many women writers in India .It can be said that print culture not only created readers among women but also writers among them .

b . The poor
Answer: Very cheap small books were brought to markets in nineteenth -century Madras towns and sold at crossroads, allowing poor people traveling to markets to buy them. Public libraries were set up from the early twentieth century, expanding the access to books . From the late nineteenth century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in many printed tracts and essays .This helped in bringing these issues to the forefront of public consciousness .
Workers in factories were too overworked and lacked the education to write much about their experiences .But some workers took initiative to write stories about their conditions . These narratives contained issues related to class oppression .So worker‘s problems also came to the fore .

c .Reformers
Answer: From the early nineteenth century there were intense debates around religious issues . Different groups confronted the changes happening within colonial society in different ways, and offered a variety of new interpretations of the beliefs of different religions .Some criticized existing practices and campaigned for reform, while others countered the arguments of reformers .These debates were carried out in public and in print .Printed tracts and newspapers not only spread the new ideas, but they shaped the nature of the debate .A wider public could now participate in these public discussions and express their views .New ideas emerged through these clashes of opinions . This was a time of intense controversies between social and religious reformers and the Hindu orthodoxy over matters like widow immolation, monotheism, Brahmanical priesthood and idolatry .In Bengal, as the debate developed, tracts and newspapers proliferated, circulating a variety of arguments .To reach a wider audience, the ideas were printed in the everyday, spoken language of ordinary people .