Digitisation of Rare Manuscipts Underway

By Sudhir Kumar

New Delhi: Lying in a state of disarray in Srinagar’s
Oriental Research Library, priceless manuscripts in Sanskrit and Persian, including the Mahabharat and the Bhagavad Gita, are being digitised at a furious pace to protect these from the ravages of time and a possible terror threat.

”There are a total of 8200 manuscripts in Sanskrit and Persian languages comprising 21 lakh pages. A vast majority of these manuscripts belong to the 13th-14th century and mostly pertain to the Ayurveda, Shaivism and Tantra.

Capturing them in digital form will be an invaluable legacy for the posterity,” Mr Pratapanand Jha, Director (Cultural Informatics), Indira Gandhi National Centre
for the Arts (IGNCA), told UNI.

Among the documents in the Library are the Yogavasistha in Sanskrit and the Mahabharat and the Bhagavat Gita in Persian, and are in a crying need for preservation. Of the 8200 manuscripts, 4800 are in Sanskrit and the remaining ones are in Persian.

There are also some folios of the famous Gilgit Manuscripts (7th century) in the Central Asian section of the Iqbal Library in Srinagar. These are also to be digitised. A major portion of these manuscripts is in the National Archives and the government does not want to send it back to the Oriental Research Library because of the
apparent threat perception.

Mr Jha, who is leading a 25-member team for digitising the manuscripts, said during the first phase of the work spread over September-November 2004 and April-November 2005, 1400 manuscripts comprising six lakh pages were digitised.

”The second phase will commence later this month. We plan to digitise the remaining manuscripts in 8-10 months. Unlike the first phase when work was stopped during the winters, this time round, we will work during cold months as well. The idea is to accomplish the job at the earliest,’’ he said, adding that the terror threat to the
famous library had always been there.

The work is being carried out by the IGNCA as part of the Central Government’s National Manuscripts Mission (NMM).

The Secretary, Education, Jammu and Kashmir government;
Director, Libraries; and the Vice Chancellor, Srinagar University are assisting the team by providing logistical facilities.

Mr Jha said his team would work a minimum of 12 hours a day to complete the job. ”We have procured two scanning machines. If we work for 10 hours a day, in one month 4000 pages can be digitised.

Since there are two scanning systems for the second phase, we hope to digitise 8000 pages in a month on an average.”

He said the IGNCA itself had 2.5 lakh manuscripts in
microfilms at its headquarters in the national capital, and these were also being digitised in itslaboratory.”Everyday we are digitising 10-12 microfilms — 300 films every month — and it is an automatic and continuous process,” he said, pointing out that these were documents of great historical importance.

Mr Jha said his team was also engaged in digitising 14,200 manuscripts, which are in the custody of the National Museum. ”So far we have digitised 1500 of these manuscripts and work is going apace to finish it on time,” he added.

Another project for the team, he said, is to train the staff of the National Library, Mongolia in digitisation expertise.

”Several important Kanjur and Tanjur Buddhist manuscripts are lying in the Mongolian library. We will train their staff to digitise these vital historical documents.”

The Tanjur and Kanjur manuscripts were taken from India to Mongolia via Tibet in the medieval times. The project has been entrusted to IGNCA by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). Once the project is completed, Mongolia will present a set of the digitised work to the Indian government.

An initiative of the Central Government’s Department of Culture,the NMM was launched in February 2003 by the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to safeguard India’s treasure of hand-written manuscripts. The IGNCA was declared as its national nodal agency.

An ambitious five-year project, the NMM seeks not merely to locate, catalogue and preserve the country’s rich wealth of manuscripts but also to enhance access, spread awareness and encourage their use for educational and research purposes.

India possesses more than five million manuscripts, making her the largest repository of manuscript wealth in the world.

The NMM is creating the National Manuscripts Library to be housed at IGNCA headquarters, which will contain digital resources on manuscripts collected from around the country.

NMM chief Sudha Gopalakrishnan points out that the surveys,being undertaken in different states, will be dovetailed in an ambitious pursuit of creating a Manuscripts Map of India.

”The aim of the survey is to identify and catalogue
manuscripts and offer help and technology to preserve them. With the affiliation of prominent institutions across the country as Manuscript Resource Centres and Manuscript Conservation Centres and the safeguarding of manuscript knowledge through a pilot digitisation programme, the NMM has placed the protection and dissemination of manuscripts on a firm footing,” she says.//EOM//

Posted By: Dr.Y.Bala Murali Krishna