Dear Harry,

It used to be common enough.  The Venkateswara Steam Press, for instance, published many Purāṇa texts in this pothi format, as can be seen by scrolling through the hits on this Archive search results page:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=venkateswara+steam+press&page=3

Apart from purāṇas, the press seems to have favored the conventional layout, which suggests that they were producing these for consumption in a more traditional manner, i.e., reading aloud ceremonially, and that the manuscript-like presentation reflected that purpose.  They are certainly not the only press to produce printed books in this layout.

Tim Lubin

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
Reply-To: Harry Spier <vasishtha.spier@gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, May 26, 2020 at 5:39 PM
To: INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
Subject: [INDOLOGY] Orientation of text in sanskrit printed book

Dear list members,

Attached is a picture from the on-line guided lessons for Maurer's "The Sanskrit Language".   It shows a  book with  text  oriented in the book 90 degrees different from the normal orientation in most western books.  I've seen this orienttion in some small devanagari chanting books.  I'm curious how common this orientation is, if it is only used for chanting books or if it is a feature of certain publishers or any other information.

Thanks,

Harry Spier