Electronic libraries: Project to digitize ancient Indian manuscripts

The national mission for manuscripts, a nationwide project of the Union cultural ministry, has offered to digitise for free more than 28,000 ancient texts (both on paper and palm leaves) at the city's Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI).   

Bori has Persian, Rigveda and even Kashmiri manuscripts with it. The digitisation project has been pending for years for various reasons, the main one being a financial crunch. "Preserving these ancient texts is the need of the hour. Besides, digitisation is the future and it needs to be done some day," said Bori honorary secretary Maitreyee Deshpande. The documents are presently being microfilmed.

The Government of Bombay started a pan-India manuscript collection project in 1866. More than 17,000 important documents were collected by eminent scholars like George Bühler, F Kielhorn, Peter Peterson, R G Bhandarkar and S R Bhandarkar under the project. The collection was first deposited at Elphinstone College, Bombay, and later transferred to Deccan College, Pune, to ensure better preservation. After Bori came into existence in 1917, its founders offered even better preservation and research for the manuscripts. In 1918, Lord Willingdon, the then Governor of the Bombay Presidency, transferred the collection to BORI.

Under P K Gode, the first curator of Bori, the institute not only maintained but also added to this valuable assortment. Till date, the institute has added more than 11,000 such documents, making for a total of 29,510 documents. The one-of-its-kind collection bears testimony to the literary heritage of the country. The largest part of the collection (17,877 manuscripts) is known as 'The Government Manuscript Library'.

Pranay Kumar Mishra, programmer at the digitisation department at the national mission for manuscripts, said, "The project will start soon. A copy will remain with us and the copyrighted material will be given to BORI."