Ten million and counting? India's manuscript store!
Fun fact from 'Eaten by a Fish'
According to estimates by India’s National Mission for Manuscripts, India possesses some ten million manuscripts, making this the largest number of manuscripts held by any single country.
The National Mission for Manuscripts defines a manuscript to be any “handwritten composition on paper, bark, cloth, metal, palm leaf or any other material dating back at least seventy-five years that has significant scientific, historical or aesthetic value.” These include paintings, illustrations and illuminations as well. Further, manuscripts have “knowledge content” and “are distinct from historical records such as epigraphs on rocks, firmans, revenue records which provide direct information on events or processes in history.”
The manuscripts cover a vast range of subject matter ranging from exegetical and religious works belonging to Vedic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and other religious traditions of India to ‘secular’ treatises on subjects such as philosophy, governance, medicine, astronomy, mathematics and linguistics.
Given the multiplicity of languages and scripts In India from ancient times, it is not surprising that the manuscripts, too, are in numerous languages and dozens of different scripts. Many are in ancient Indian scripts no longer in (common) use, such as Brahmi, Gupta, Kutila, Sharada, Grantha , Kharosthi, and Siddham. A particular script may be used to write more than one language, as is the case with Devanagari, or a particular language may be written in different scripts as is Sanskrit.
These manuscripts are held in the libraries of temples, monasteries, universities, museums, research institutions as well as in private collections in India and abroad. The Manuscripts Mission has so far identified 3851 repositories for Indian manuscripts — most of these lie within the country, though the British Library in London, the Bibliotheque National in Paris, and other institutions across East Asia, Europe and the USA also hold significant collections.
The National Manuscripts Mission was established in 2003, under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, “to unearth and preserve the vast manuscript wealth of India“ and to “render accessible” these manuscripts. It has so far received 4,500,000 manuscripts for the purpose of digitisation.
Do you know of an interesting manuscript? Tell us in the comments below!
This folio of the popular Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra (Lotus Sutra) is written in Sanskrit in an early form of South Turkestan Brahmi script. The manuscript originally comprised more than 350 folios, each consisting of two thin layers of paper pasted together. Leaves of this same manuscript are preserved in London, Munich and Berlin. Ink on paper.
Sources
Image source: Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Sanskrit_manuscript_of_Lotus_Sutra_in_South_Turkestan_Brahmi_script.jpg
Sahoo, Jyotshna; Sahoo, Bismita M. Phil. Scholar; Mohanty, Basudev Assistant Librarian; and Dash, Nrusingh Kumar Librarian, "Indian Manuscript Heritage and the Role of National Mission for Manuscripts" (2013). Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). 984. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/984
National Mission for Manuscripts:
As I was reading this piece, I wondered if any of Ghalib's own manuscripts have survived. Would you happen to know? I would love to see his handwriting.
We were in Milan a few years ago and accidentally stumbled upon an exhibition of Da Vinci's original hand written notes/sketches/designs. I cannot tell you the thrill I experienced at seeing those. I was transfixed and could easily have spent a whole lot more time just "exploring" his writing, albeit from behind a sheet of glass.
Just knowing that something like that of Ghalib's exists somewhere would be so pleasing.
Informative.