Alessandro Graheli's paper "The Choice of Devanāgarī" in the Festschrift for Dominik Wujastyk contains very valuable historical data on Devanagari (and other Indian) typefaces, even though the paper in itself is not mainly about history, but about rationales for choosing latin script or Devanagari in contemporary editions. 

Graheli does not give a specific date for the creation of Devanagari typefaces at the Nirnaya Sagar Press (perhaps there is none), but it would definitely have been in the late 19th century (the press was founded in 1869). 

Naik 1971 seems to be the publication to look at:

Naik, B. S. (1971). Typography of Devanagari. Bombay: Directorate of Languages.

Best regards, Birgit Kellner

Am 11.05.25 um 19:39 schrieb Harry Spier via INDOLOGY:

External Ema he : please use links and attachments from trusted sources only

Thank you Madhav and Andrew,

From the Adishila font webpage given by Andrew Ollett https://adishila.com/fonts/ 

Adishila Samskrta:  The font design is exact trace of Nirnay Sagar Press books without modification.
Adishila: The font design is inspired by Vanivilas Press Srirangam.
 Adishila Dev:  The font design is inspired by Nirnay Sagar Press books.as footnote fonts or title fonts. 
 

So the fonts exist to simulate the typefaces of  some of the major devanagari publishers of the early 20th century .  Do we know when the Nirnaya Sagar Press started producing its typeface. Was it sometime in the 19th century or is that too early?

Thanks,

Harry Spier

On Sun, May 11, 2025 at 9:25 AM Andrew Ollett <andrew.ollett@gmail.com> wrote:

This has come up before on this list, but:

https://adishila.com/fonts/

On Sun, May 11, 2025, 3:20 PM Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

The Nirnaya Sagar Press had its own type foundry. They were preceded in this task by another press in Mumbai run by Ganpat Krishnaji. The Bombay government under the British started publishing Devanagari tracts perhaps using fonts made by some Bengal outfit.

While designing my Madhushree [pre-Unicode] font, I had tried to copy the Nirnaya Sagar font. Now perhaps Sanskrit2003 font comes close to Nirnaya Sagar.

Madhav M. Deshpande

Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics

University of Michigan, Ann  Arbor, Michigan, USA

Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies

Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]

On Sat, May 10, 2025 at 5:32 PM Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

I meant to write:

Dear list members,

Would anyone know:

1) Did the larger early 20th century Indian publishers such as Vidya Vlas Press, Nirnaya-sagar press, and others use the same typeface to typeset their publications, or did each publisher have its own unique typeface.

2) Has anyone made a modern unicode font to mirror the typeface used by Nirnaya-sagar press.

Thanks,

Harry Spier

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-- 
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Prof. Birgit Kellner, Ph.D., w.M.
Institut für Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften
Dominikanerbastei 16
1010 Wien
Tel.: +43-(0)1-51581-6420

Prof. Birgit Kellner, Ph.D., f.M.
Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Dominikanerbastei 16
A-1010 Vienna
Austria
Phone: +43-(0)1-51581-6420

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