ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a new initiative of book production in which Bidyasundar was inserted back into the larger Annadamangal that in turn was collated with all Bharat Chandra’s compositions and a long introduction in a single volume and appropriately titled Collected Works. It was the enterprise of a modest publishing house that printed it for the first time in 1860, but the volume took off as a major project thereafter as several publishers joined in and volumes ran several editions. Bidyasundar underwent an interesting alteration. Publishers and editors added a section containing Sanskrit slokas that were never composed by Ray but were extant in the oral literary world. These verses called Chourapanshat had their own lineage in medieval poetry and were perhaps intended to make Bidyasunder more ‘profound’ and ‘sacred,’ and in some ways, shield it from vilification. This chapter traces how this book connected a small sized publishing house to the more magisterial venture that was harnessed to a loftier project of defining national identity and of reiterating a sense of pride.
