A Puthi is a book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

 of poetic fairy tales and religious stories of rural ancient Bengal

Bengal

Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...

 which were read by a senior ‘educated’ person while others would listen. This was used as a medium for education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

 and constructive entertainment

Entertainment

Entertainment consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie. Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreation...

.

Puthis are ancient manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

s. In Bengal, these books were different and unlike any other book at that time. Writers, or Munshi

Munshi

Munshi was the Hindi-Urdu name of a contractor, writer or secretary, used in Mughal Empire and later British India of the native language teachers or secretaries employed by Europeans....

s, used to write in Songskrito, Bangla, or Local Bangla.

The pages of Puthis could be leaves

Leaves

-History:Vocalist Arnar Gudjonsson was formerly the guitarist with Mower, and he was joined by Hallur Hallsson , Arnar Ólafsson , Bjarni Grímsson , and Andri Ásgrímsson . Late in 2001 they played with Emiliana Torrini and drew early praise from the New York Times...

, sheets of wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

, or old paper

Paper

Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....

s. Uaually, they were written on one side and bound with a piece of string.

Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad

Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad

Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad or Abdul Karim the Literature Master, was a Bangladeshi author, who was born in village Suchakradondi of district Chittagong.-Life:...

 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.