Bengali Almanac – An Uncharted Area of Indian Mass Communication – Dr. Nilay Kumar Saha

‘Bengali Almanac’ was hand-written on palm leaf at the early stage of civilization. The introduction of printing technology and the growing demand of almanac in the society ushered in a new route of investment for the investors. The rich men of the then society took the opportunity and the number of printed Bengali almanac increased rapidly. To be precise, it was the competitive attitude to reach out to the largest possible market among the publishers of Bengali almanac which prompted them to incorporate information from diverse fields along with the basic content in their publications. For a period of two hundred years the remarkable contribution of the publishers of Bengali almanac provide a rich repository of information relating to almost all aspects of human civilization along with many remarkable and interesting advertisements. But unfortunately these immensely useful materials pertaining to Indian communication system have not yet been explored properly. Such extremely important components remained ignored in writing the history of Indian mass communication system thus was incomplete and even unreliable. The present work is a unique attempt to explore the glorious role of Bengali almanac in shaping the very basis the Indian mass communication system which so far remained grossly neglected.