Manuscript and Manuscriptology in India

by Subodh Gopal Nandi and Projit Kumar Palit

Preservation of manuscripts is a serious issue for the Librarians, information scientists and archivists ever since human beings acquired the knowledge of writing. The manuscripts have the chances to be damaged by insects or due to tearing by use of rough handling; so it is most essential to repair these damages at the moment of identification.

The preservation of manuscripts follows traditional as well as modern methods, which are scientific and preserve documents for further use. In traditional system of preservation herbals are used such as neem leaves, aswagandha leaves, dried ginger, kumkum fruit powder, sandal wood, turmeric powder, garlic, etc. In case of modern methods suitable chemicals are used for preservation.

Manuscript and manuscript logy in India' focuses on the issues that India has a rich cultural heritage. Manuscripts are primary sources of such heritage knowledge. Various fields of human endeavor are stored on variety of medias viz. clay tablets, stones, metals, tree barks, palm leaves, animal skins, cloths, papers, etc. Manuscripts are available throughout India in several languages and scripts, which cover religious, philosophical, historical, literary and scientific subjects.

This work contains twenty-eight papers contributed by distinguished scholars from India. These articles with notes, references and bibliography are well illustrated and have shed illuminating light on various aspect of manuscript and manuscript logy as practiced in India which focus on the following facets like, Manuscript writers; manuscript research; manuscript typology; manuscript and use of colophons; style of writing manuscript; manuscript editing; manuscript centers; manuscript collection; manuscript storage and preservation; manuscript conservation; manuscript catalogue and cataloguing and manuscript case studies.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• Buddhism and Indo-Tibetan literature: a survey linked to manuscripts and xylographs in India/S.K. Pathak
• Manuscript catalogue and cataloguing/Alakananda Banerjee
• Arabic manuscripts of Kerala/A.I. Rahmathullah
• Jainism and Jain manuscripts/Jagat Ram Bhattacharyya
• Bhakti and gleaned from the manuscript of Chaitanya Charitamrita of Krishnadasa Kaviraja/Pranabananda Jash
• Haracandra Tarkapancanana: a little-known scholar from Calcutta/S.Y. Wakankar
• Vyadhibhaktitarangini and Goharivishahari Pujabidhi: a study/Amalendu Bhattacharjee and Jahar Kanti Sen
• The manuscript of Sabitri Brata Katha: a study of the 19 century prose text of Barak Valley and its context/Dipendu Das
• Padmapuran: a case study of a manuscript of 1878 Barak Valley of South Assam/Sanjib Deblaskar
• Un-published Chishti Sufi Literature in India in the 17 century/Muhammad Ismail
• Manuscripts of North-East India: a case study of Tripura/Projit Kumar Palit
• Angirasa Kalpa: a study/Pranati Mohapatra and Harekrushna Mishra
• Role of Manuscript in the development of Chinese writing system/Avijit Banerjee
• The development of script for Nagamese/Ajit Kumar Baishya
• Dimasa writing system: a linguistic approach/Kh. Dhiren Singha
• Problems in editing the Sanskrit and the Tibetan texts of the Kamadhenu/Lata Mahesh Deokar
• A glimpse of scientific knowledge in ancient India: evidence of Manuscript/Anita Bagchi
• Styles of Islamic calligraphy in manuscripts/G.S. Khwaja
• Manuscript use and manuscript preservation with special reference to palm-leave manuscripts/Subodh Gopal Nandi
• Tagore, Visva-Bharati and Manuscriptology/Buddhadev Acharya and Sailen Kumar De
• The study of manuscripts and modern critical scholarship/Jagatpati Sarkar
• Anatomy of manuscripts/Naba Gopal Roy. 23. History of the catalogues of Sanskrit Manuscripts/Mitali Chatterjee
• Cataloguing of manuscripts and its difficulties/J. Lalitha
• Traditional methods of preserving manuscripts: an overview/Aarti Sharma and Suniti Bala
• Preservation, conservation and digitization of manuscripts: problems and prospects/Rupinder Singh, Sanjeev Kumar and Deepak Agarwal.
• Manuscript collections in Indian public libraries/Rani Syamalamba
• Manuscript collections of South India/M.N. Krishnakumar.