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Saturday, Feb 05, 2005

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National

National Survey on Manuscripts planned

By Anita Joshua

NEW DELHI, FEB. 4. Buoyed by the results of a pilot survey that unearthed about seven lakh manuscripts from 53 districts across three States in five days, the Government plans to undertake the first-ever National Survey of Manuscripts to piece together the country's ``unknown, inaccessible and fragmented'' intellectual heritage.

To be undertaken by the two-year-old National Mission for Manuscripts, locating the scattered treasure trove of manuscripts was part of the original mandate of the Mission. But, even as the then political dispensation at the Centre spoke about tracking down the five million manuscripts India is said to be home to, officials were not too optimistic given the general ignorance about India's written tradition. A pilot survey conducted in December last in all of Orissa, 12 districts of Uttar Pradesh and 10 districts of Bihar has made officials at the Union Culture Ministry sit up and take notice; enough to decide to push for the launch of the first-ever National Survey of Manuscripts in the next financial year. Preceded by a massive awareness campaign the survey was conducted by the Mission for five days in each of the 53 districts and involved about 2,700 people working on the ground in a ``census-like operation.''

With Orissa being a known repository of palm leaf manuscripts, the entire State was surveyed in one go and 2.9 lakhs manuscripts were found. Bihar yielded 1.5 lakhs manuscripts from 10 districts and Uttar Pradesh two lakhs from 12 districts with 1.8 lakhs being found in Varanasi. While any ``handwritten document with knowledge content over 75 years old'' qualifies to be declared part of India's manuscript heritage as per the Antiquities Act, the pilot survey has brought up documents that date back to the 14th century. The antiquated manuscripts apart, the survey at Unnao, U.P., brought up a one quintal Mahabharata and a 10-metre-long Holy Quran. The Mission plans to take up the north-eastern States, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat in the next fiscal in the hope of wrapping up the entire country by 2008. Besides working towards creating a National Manuscripts Library at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, the Mission is also planning a compendium of indigenous techniques in manuscript conservation.

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