Access to the Intellectual Traditions of India as seen through the Sanskrit Manuscript collections of the Libraries and Museums of European Countries and USA

A Project Proposal Submitted to ICHR

By Dr. Ravi Prakash Arya

Concept Note Today, every artefact documenting the history of ancient civilisations has become part of a global heritage that needs to be carefully preserved and studied. Manuscripts are among such artefacts. They occupy a distinctive place in history as they speak to us with the actual words of past men and women about their society, culture and scientific and technological advancement. Ancient manuscripts of India are the basic historical evidence and have great research value. It is estimated that India possesses more than five million manuscripts, out of which 1.5 million locked up abroad, making her the largest repository of manuscript wealth in the world. Thousands of such valued unpublished Indian manuscripts on varied subjects are lying scattered or fragmented in foreign collections and some of these are no longer accessible to research scholars. This invaluable and unique pool of knowledge is under threat and manuscripts are disappearing at an alarming rate for want of a proper care, listing and cataloguing.

In this respect, the collections of Indian manuscripts in the libraries of Europe and America are a precious resource, so far little known even to specialists. They comprise around 1.5 million documents in Sanskrit and Prakrit languages, written on different supports, such as birch-bark, palm-leaf and paper. The collections include works of great rarity in different genres and on a host of subjects, ranging from religion and philosophy to astronomy, metallurgy and other scientific disciplines, grammar, law and poetry. Among its treasures are some of the oldest extant manuscripts from South Asia, dating from the last centuries of the first millennium C.E., which were collected in Nepal, virtually the only region of the Indian subcontinent where the climate allows their survival for more than a few centuries.

Objective of the Project: 1. To carry out an exhaustive survey of the library holdings in foreign countries especially, European countries and USA, gathering all the basic information for each unpublished item of historical importance related with science and technology in ancient India

2. To collect data on the physical characteristics of the manuscripts, identify untitled works and attempt to situate them in their broader historical, cultural and scientific context.

3. To procure a significant portion of the holdings specifically on various aspects of science and technology in Ancient India through digital means by combining traditional philological methods with advanced information technology. 4. To make these extraordinary documents available in various formats to the scholarly community of Sanskritists, scientific community, and historians as well as to the public.

5. To create an extensive multimedia archive comprising of all findings obtained from the survey of the manuscripts that will be searchable online through the online digital library.

Sources: Outside India, Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit manuscripts are available in almost all the famous libraries in USA, Europe, Japan, Srilanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar, et al. A large number of Indian manuscripts are there in the custody of various institutes and libraries in Germany, England and France. For instance

UK: Libraries museums of Britain holding more than 30000 manuscripts. Main Collection of Manuscripts in Britain is Cambridge University and Bodelian Library Oxford.

Bodleian Library, Oxford is the repository of some 8,700 Sanskrit manuscripts.

The core collection is built on manuscripts from three sources.

The first Boden Professor, Horace Wilson, who was appointed in 1832, sold his considerable personal library of 627 manuscripts to the Bodleian for £500 in 1842.

In 1845 Sir William Walker presented the Library with some 100 Sanskrit manuscripts (with a few in Gujarati and Hindi), which had been collected by his father, General Alexander Walker, while a political resident in Baroda.

In 1849, a further 160 manuscripts were purchased for £350 from Dr. W.H. Mill, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, which he had collected whilst he was Principal of Bishop’s College, Calcutta.

These three collections led Professor Max Mûller in 1856 to describe the Bodleian’s Sanskrit manuscript holdings as the second best in Europe, surpassed only by those of the East India Company.

In 1909 the largest single collection of Sanskrit manuscripts ever to come to the Bodleian was donated by the Prime Minister of Nepal, the Maharajah Sir Chandra Shum Shere. Numbering over six thousand manuscripts, more than doubles the Library’s collection of unique Sanskrit texts and covers every branch of Sanskrit literature.

In 1927 the Library’s Sanskrit manuscript collection was further enriched with the Indian Institute Library, which had been founded by the Boden Professor of Sanskrit, Sir Monier Monier-Williams, came under Bodleian management. The Indian Institute Library manuscript collection consisted, in addition to a small number of manuscripts purchased in 1886, collections presented by Sir Monier-Williams, the Reverend S.C. Malan and Major J.S. Law. Sir Monier- Williams’ collection contained a valuable series of Jaina manuscripts procured in 1877-1878 through the agency of Professor Georg Bühler. The Indian Institute collections were catalogued by A.B. Keith in 1903 but this publication does not include the 368 texts, mainly in Sanskrit, which were acquired by Sir Marc Aurel Stein during his visits to Kashmir between 1888 and 1905. This collection, which includes some rare birch bark items, was handed over as a deposit to the Curators of the Indian Institute in May 1911 and was bequeathed to the Indian Institute in his will. A handlist of the items was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1912.

Scotland: The main collection of Sanskrit manuscript in Scotland is in Edinburgh University Library.

France: The main collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in France is in the Biblioth`eque National [National Library], Paris.

Germany: There are several important collections of Sanskrit manuscripts in Germany. The best known are in Berlin (National Library), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and in T¨ubingen (Univer-sity Library). There is also a collection in M¨unich, which was catalogued by the historian of Indian medicine Jolly (1912). Because all the collections of Sanskrit manuscripts were moved about and muddled up during the War, the Sanskrit manuscripts in Germany have all been re-catalogued in a big series of catalogues edited by Janert (1962). It is best to consult these catalogues, as the manuscripts may not be where the pre - War catalogues say they were.

Italy: There is also a fine collection of several hundred mss. in Florence in this collection. It was catalogued by Aufrecht.

The Netherlands (Holland): There is a collection of several hundred palm-leaf manuscripts and some paper manuscripts at the Kern Institute in Leiden and some other libraries.

United States: There is a large collection of Sanskrit manuscript in several libraries of USA. Prominent among these are libraries of Harvard University (in Cambridge, Mas-sachusetts) and the University of Columbia (New York).

Denmark: There is a rich repository of Sanskrit holdings in the Danish National Library (Kongelige Bibliotek), Copenhagen.

These holdings includes the Codices Sanscriti, collected in the early nineteenth century by the pioneer comparative linguist, Rasmus Rask, comprises both palm-leaf and paper manuscripts, most written in either Bengali, Telugu or Sinhalese script.

The second - the Codices Indici - was collected by the surgeon and botanist, Nathanael Wallich (well-known for his involvement in the foundation of the Indian Museum and Botanical Garden at Calcutta). Mostly written in Bengali script on locally produced country paper, most of these codices pertain to the genre of Ayurveda.

The third and largest collection originates from Nepal and was collected in the 1950s by the cultural anthropologist Werner Jacobsen. Its highly heterogenous nature reflects the fact that Jacobsen had an ethnographical curator's eye for curious objects.

These holdings have a rich heterogeneous Sanskrit material of interest to philologists, anthropologists and historians of religion, art and iconography.

In addition to above, a fine collection of Sanskrit manuscripts is also reported from Japan, Srilanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar and Nepal.

Methodology The science related and other unpublished manuscript wealth of historical importance will be surveyed through a collaborative effort with fellow Sanskritists in India and abroad for, so that a better understanding of the history of ancient Indian intellectual tradition may be developed.

A data of scientifically and historically important manuscripts not yet published will be collected and compiled.

The concerned libraries and museums will be approached for procuring all such manuscripts through digital means by combining traditional philological methods with advanced information technology.

The research findings will be presented through publications, as well as in national and international workshops to be organised from time to time during the pendency and the concluding year of the project, focusing on the intellectual traditions that have played a key role in the Indian civilisation.

Extant Research on the Theme Proposed

Since 18th Century from time to time several fragmented attempts have been made towards cataloguing of manuscripts wealth of India preserved in various museums and libraries of the world by the local scholars in their own way in their languages For instance,

At Bibliotheque Nationale, France cataloguing of manuscripts started in Eighteenth Century and the first catalogue, Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecae regiae, was published under the supervision of Stephen Fourmont in 1739. This series continued for a long time and Department des Manuscripts Catalogue Somaire des Manuscrits Sanskrits et Palis published catalogues in 1806, 1844, 1854, 1880, 1882 and 1907-08.

In 19th Century Albrecht Weber, a German Indologists also published a catalogue on Sanskrit and Prakrit Manuscript holdings in Berlin under the title ‘ Verzeichniss der Sanskrit und Prakrit Handschriften der Koniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin, published in four Vols in 1886.

Similarly, Tuebingen University (Germany), St. Petersbourg Academy and Bodleian Library were in forefront in publishing catalogues of Indian manuscripts.

J. D. Pearson (1971) also made an attempt for cataloguing of Sanskrit manuscripts in other countries of Europe and North America under the title ‘Oriental Manuscripts in Europe and North America: a Survey’. See also the addendum “Oriental manuscripts”, in, South Asian Bibliography: a Handbook and Guide , compiled by the South Asia Library Group (Hassocks,Sussex: Harvester, 1979).

Theodor Aufrecht, who held the Professorial Chair of Sanskrit at Edinburgh, the second by Professor Moriz Winternitz and Mr Arthur Berriedale Keith, who was also later to be elected to the Chair of Sanskrit at Edinburgh also presented two volume catalogue with a supplement on Sanskrit Manuscript available in Oxford and Cambridge.

Pole-man (1938) also made a survey of Sanskrit manuscripts in the North America. This is now a little out of date, and not always accurate, but it is still valuable. David Pingree has written catalogues of the Sanskrit manuscripts which could not be published yet.

In one of the surveys made by Dr. S. C. Biswas and Mr. M. K. Prajapati on behalf of INTACH during 1988- 90 and on the basis of scrutiny of about 1100 printed catalogues and hand lists belonging to 70 libraries, institutions and individuals, the following estimates were made: 1. Total number of manuscripts in 5,000,000 India

2. Indian manuscripts available in European countries 60,000. Of these 30000 are in Britain and rest 30000 in other countries of Europe (France, Germany, Holland, Italy etc.)

3. Indian manuscripts in South Asia 150,000 and Asian Countries

4. Number of manuscripts recorded in catalogues 1,000,000

5. Percentage of manuscripts language wise Sanskrit 67% Other Indian Languages 25% Arabic/Persian/Tibetan 8% (Source: Project Document, NMM, 2003)

How does this project aims to make a contribution to history? All the above cited attempts belong to the remote past between 18th Century and 20th Century. They emphasised on the statistical data and physical condition of manuscript wealth held in various libraries and museums of the world and don’t have a specific target for study and research. Moreover, all the above cited attempts could not encompass the entire bulk of material. The present project is significant, because it is going to update us with the current status of this wealth. It will have a special stress on unpublished manuscripts with historical importance and dealing with various scientific subjects, as books dealing with more than 40 scientific disciplines have been referred to here and there in various extant Sanskrit texts which are not available in physical form to the readers and scholars. This attempt may help retrieve the lost scientific treasure of Bharat for the study and research of our future generations, thereby helping us to revisit and reconstruct India’s past based upon this renewed information.