Anant Priolkar

Anant Kakba Priolkar was born in 1895.{{Cite web |last=Ranganathan |first=Murali |date=2023-02-04 |title=How Marathi literary giant Anant Kakba Priolkar became a pioneering historian of print in India |url=https://scroll.in/article/1062169/how-marathi-literary-giant-anant-kakba-priolkar-became-a-pioneering-historian-of-print-in-india |access-date=2025-06-07 |website=Scroll.in}}

Priolkar was active in the field of Marathi literature and served as secretary of the Marathi Sahitya Parishad, a research organisation sponsored by the government of Bombay. He worked as a writer, editor, and translator, and played a role in building literary institutions in Maharashtra. He was also associated with the Bombay-based publishing house D B Taraporevala Sons and Co., where he helped produce works across multiple disciplines.

Priolkar is recognised for his scholarly contributions to the study of the history of printing and Indo-Portuguese interactions. He was among the first to argue that the first printing press in Asia arrived in Goa in 1556, marking the beginning of print culture in India. This argument was presented in his work The Printing Press in India: Its Beginnings and Early Development, published in 1958 by the Marathi Samshodhan Mandal. His work drew on Portuguese records and presented evidence that the first press in India was used to print texts in Latin and Konkani, including religious materials produced by Jesuit missionaries.

Priolkar’s research expanded the understanding of early Indian book history and challenged dominant narratives that located the origins of Indian print primarily in Bengal. He also wrote extensively about the Goa Inquisition, bringing attention to its violence and impact.

Priolkar's book, The Goa Inquisition, is criticized for its exaggerated views of the Goa Inquisition and presenting a perspective that people converted to Catholicism out of fear.{{Cite web |last=Luis Menezes |first=Dale |date=2020-07-01 |title=Misuse of History: The Inquisition |url=https://www.heraldgoa.in/edit/opinions/misuse-of-history-the-inquisition/162483 |access-date=2025-06-11 |website=Herald Goa |language=en}}

He strongly advocated for the merger of Goa into Maharashtra, even though the majority of Goans rejected the idea in the 1967 Goa status referendum.{{cite magazine |date=27 January 1967 |title=Goa: But Not Gone |magazine=Time}} He also considered Konkani as a dialect of Marathi language.{{cite book |last=Sinai Dhume |first=Ananta Ramakrishna |title=The Cultural History of Goa from 10000 BC to 1352 AD |publisher=Broadway book centre |year=2009 |isbn=9788190571678 |location=Panaji |pages=202–257}}

• The Printing Press in India: Its Beginnings and Early Development being a quatercentenary commemoration study of the advent of printing in India in 1556. Bombay: Marathi Samshodhana Mandala, 1958.
• The Goa Inquisition (A Quatercentenary Commemoration Study of the Inquisition in India, printed by V. G. Moghe at Mumbai University Press, Mumbai) (1961)
• Granthik Marathi Bhashya Ani Kokani Boli (ग्रान्थिक मराठी भाषा आणि कोकणी बोली).
• "French Author of a Marathi Purana, Fr. Etienne de la Croix." Journal of the University of Bombay n.s. 29/2 (1959) 122–149.
• Goa Re-discovered. Bhakta Books International, 1967.
• Priya Ani Apriya (प्रिय आणि अप्रिय)

{{Reflist}}

• Tadkodkar, S.M. [Ph.D. on A.K. Priolkar submitted to the Goa University.]
• Ludo Rocher, The Puranas. A History of Indian Literature, vol. 2, fasc. 3. (Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1986) 75.
• Preface by J.S. Sukhtankar and Subhash Bhende to A.K. Priolkar's "Hindustanche Don Darwaje", published by 'The Goa Hindu Association' (Mumbai) in 1974.

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Category:1895 births

Category:1973 deaths

Category:Marathi-language writers

Category:20th-century Indian historians

Category:20th-century Indian writers

Category:Indian editors