ABSTRACT
Portuguese brought a printing press in India in the sixteenth century, but they used it only for printing sacred texts. The British occupied political power in India in the mid-eighteenth century, but had no printing press. India had 'textbook' kind of works even before English came here, but they were not printed, neither were they available in hundreds of copies. A similar tradition prevailed for learning Persian, another popular foreign language in India before English. With the advent of Europeans in India in large numbers during sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, grammar-translation method gained popularity. European Christian missionaries and others came to India in large numbers. At the end of the seventeenth century, only the few Indians that worked with the British, mainly as their domestic servants and as their agents and helpers in the market, knew a few words of English needed for their business.
