Indian-origin scripts to be documented

By our assessment, there are approximately 10 million manuscripts in India. We are taking steps to enhance their access, improve awareness about their cultural inheritance and encourage their use for educational and research purposes. P JHA, director of the state-run National Mission for Manuscripts

NEW DELHI: The ministry of culture will start the process of documenting Indian-origin manuscripts in foreign countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Russia, a top official said. “There are more than 77 libraries outside India where major collections of manuscripts of Indian origin exist. We will be reaching out to many foreign countries including the US, the UK, Japan Russia,” said P Jha, director of the state-run National Mission for Manuscripts.

The Mission was set up in February 2003 to locate, enumerate, preserve and describe Indian manuscripts both within the country and abroad.

For starters, the Mission will document about 17,000 such manuscripts in Vietnam and 48,000 in Thailand.

The documents identified in Vietnam are in Cham script, which is used to write Cham, an Austronesian language spoken by some 230,000 Chams in Vietnam and Cambodia while those in Thailand are in the Lanna script, a writing system used for Lanna language, a close relative of the Thai language. The Cham and Lanna script are both so-called Indic scripts, and derived from Indian languages.

These will be translated into Roman script, documented and digitised.

The manuscripts, mostly pertaining to Hindu and Buddhist religions, are with personal collectors as well as libraries.

“By our assessment, there are approximately 10 million manuscripts in India. We are taking steps to enhance their access, improve awareness about their cultural inheritance and encourage their use for educational and research purposes,” Jha added.

The Indian origin manuscripts in Maldives and Mongolia will be documented next.

As part of its annual day celebration on 7 February, the Mission made the metadata of around 3.2 million manuscripts accessible through its web portal.

One can now access the digitised manuscripts on the portal, namami.gov.in.

The Hindi version of the portal was launched on this occasion.

Surendra Mohan Mishra, project coordinator of Manuscripts Resource and Conservation Centre of Kurukshetra University said: “Indian-origin manuscripts are stacked in the libraries of many foreign countries...it is therefore, essential to protect and conserve these manuscripts.”