Rare manuscripts, easy view

As the country reels under the challenges of sustainable water quality management in rural India and Prime Minster Narendra Modi adopts clean Ganga mission, some cues on how to do it could be taken from the over 8-century-old text Tadaga Utsarg Vidhi, roughly translated as General Rules for Pond Management. Written in Maithili language in devnagri script, this text was written in 1173-74 on paper and has 24 pages.Neatly preserved at the Vishveshvaranand Vishva-Bandhu Institute of Sanskrit and Indological Studies (VVBIS & IS) at Sadhu Ashram on the outskirts of Hoshiarpur, the rare manuscript is among the more than 2,000 others that would soon be catalogued online.
"National Manuscripts Mission has digitized these manuscripts and work is on to put the catalogue of our rare and old books online. That would be a great treasure of Sanskrit literature as around 1.30 lakh books crossing over to the virtual world," said Dr Shiv Kumar Verma, deputy librarian at VVIBS & IS. These will also include the around 1,000 photocopies of rare manuscripts whose owners refused to part with the original ones.
As its name suggests, Sadhu Ashram doesn't attract much attention, with most Hoshiarpur residents unaware of its priceless treasure. It is also home to Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute (VVRI), a 91-year-old Institute that was originally established in Lahore. In 1965, VVBIS & IS was carved out of the VVRI as a department of Panjab University, Chandigarh; the VVRI remains an independent entity. "Some of the manuscripts are in ancient scripts such as Brahmi, Sharada, Pavuchi etc. that are almost extinct or can't be deciphered by many," says Chander Shekhar, a surveyor at the VVRI, who has been actively working on the preservation and collection of manuscripts. And he hasn't just been collecting rare manuscripts and increasing the numbers at the institute, with those who do not want to part with their collections, he shares tips on preserving them.
Ayurveda granth, Madanparijat, written on bhoj patras in Sharda script with leather binding; Ramcharitra Manas in Gurmukhi script; a manuscript on handmade paper carrying description of horses and their diseases with sketches detailing diseases; a 22-yard horoscope of a Patiala royal written in Sanskrit Garhwali; all 700 Gita shlokas handwritten on a single page that can be read only with a magnifying glass and some manuscripts in South Indian languages — Digitizing was a much-needed step. More so as time flies and leaves it marks on the manuscript, rendering them brittle, damaged, illegible.
Also on display at the institute are centuries-old pens, method of writing in straight lines without drawing lines on the handmade paper.
"This happens to be the biggest centre of Indology Studies in North India and has been attracting scholars from across the country and even from abroad apart from producing a lot of research work," said VVIBS & IS chairman Prem Lal Sharma.