puthi
{{short description|Book of Bengali tales: devotional, historic, fairy, folk}}
A puthi ({{langx|bn|পুঁথি}}, Perso-Arab: پوتھی) is a book or writing of poetic fairy tales and religious stories of Bengal and present-day East India, which were read by a senior "educated" person while others would listen. This was used as a medium for education and constructive entertainment.{{cite Banglapedia|article=Puthi_Literature|author=Ahmed,Wakil}}
Terminology
File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Geschrift op lontarblad TMnr 1534-8b.jpg, Indonesia, showing how the manuscripts were tied into a book.]]
Puthis were manuscripts written in the Bengali or Odia languages, utilising scripts such as the Odia, Sylheti Nagri, Bengali and Perso-Arabic script. They were mostly used in Bengal, Arakan and East India.{{cite web|url=https://lawforms.hypotheses.org/129|website=Lawforms|title=On scripting Bengali|last=Chatterjee|first=Nandini|date=3 Apr 2018|access-date=23 April 2021}}{{cite book|title=A Bengali Book written in Persian Script|author=Khan Sahib, Maulavi Abdul Wali|date=2 Nov 1925|url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.280407/page/n405/mode/2up|access-date=23 April 2021}}{{cite book|title=The Wahhabi Movement in India|author=Ahmad, Qeyamuddin|date=20 Mar 2020|publisher=Routledge}} Puthi (پوتھی, /po:t̪ʰi:/) is a Sanskrit originated feminine noun which means book.
The pages of puthis could be leaves, leather, sheets of wood, or barks. This was common before the invention of paper. Usually, they were written on one side and bound with a piece of string. This made it resistant to insects as well, allowing it to survive for a long time.{{cite Banglapedia|article=Puthi|author=Bhowmik, Dulal}}
Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad collected more than 2,000 puthis. More than 1,000 of them were written by Bengali Muslims. No other person or organization has collected this number of puthis before.
Script and language
Majority of puthis were written in the Bengali script. There have also been puthis written using the Arabic script. The register used in these puthis was predominantly Dobhashi Bengali, a variety of Bengali which lacked the tatsamas present in modern Bengali and used heavily Arabic and Persian vocabulary.
See also
References
Category:Culture of Bangladesh
Category:Bengali-language literature
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