1 1 Development of Modern Tools for Deciphering Medicinal Manuscripts Written in Grantha Script M.A. Alwar and M.A. Ananth The Sanskrit word ëVedaí is derived from the verbal root ëvidíñëto know.í The four Vedas are together considered to be the storehouse of knowledge or unlimited information. In the past, our predecessors did not want the valuable knowledge, experienced by then, to perish along with them. Hence, they struggled very hard to convey this knowledge to posterity. The evidence of writing in ancient India is available as early as fifth Century BC. The writing was necessitated due to the enormous growth of knowledge. The fifth Century BC onward, we come across several palm leaf manuscripts, inscriptions, plaques etc. Later, the scripts were classified into four categories viz. (i) Script used for printing (ii) Script used in inscriptions (iii) Script written with pens (iv) Script caused by the eating away of the manuscripts by moths. According to an old text called Lalitavistara, which was translated into Chinese in 308 AD it is said that the Buddha was admitted to a school called Lipi‹ålå (School for learning 2 Saving Indiaís Medical Manuscripts scripts) and he learnt sixty-four varieties of scripts over there. A list of scripts that were learnt by the Buddha is also given in that book. Among the scripts, Bråhm∂ appears to be the oldest as it was invented in the third Century BC. Devanågar∂ script was fully developed by the tenth or eleventh Century AD. The Grantha script, which is older than the Devanågar∂, belongs to the seventh Century AD. In South India, knowledge of Grantha script was considered to be a must for a scholar, as most of the texts were written in Grantha script. There is a reference of this Grantha script in the Mahåbhårata. Kannada script dates back to fourth century AD. Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu have round shaped scripts, whereas Devanågar∂, Nand∂någar∂, Modi etc., have boxñtype letters. Oriya and other scripts are of mixed shapes. It is necessary to know something about the scribes, who actually committed the older texts into writing. Sanskrit scholars in those days, hardly wrote anything by themselves as they were used to the oral tradition. For writing the texts, they had to engage professional scribes. Most of the times, the scribes were not scholars. Sometimes these scribes could not understand or hear the word properly as was dictated to them by the scholars. This led to certain confusions in the text. There are thousands of medicinal manuscripts preserved all over India which are written in Grantha script. Most of these manuscripts are the hereditary possessions of individ- uals or of mutts and institutions. In most of the cases, the possessors are not in a position to conserve them properly, as they do not have the technical knowledge of preserving a manuscript. They are also not prepared to part with them, as they consider these manuscripts as their invaluable possess- ions. In such circumstances, it is very difficult to preserve these manuscripts, which are fast deteriorating in condition and ultimately breaking into pieces. In order to save that knowledge, it is necessary to digitize them for further use in dissemination of knowledge. Development of Modern . .: M.A. Alwar and M.A. Ananth 3 Some of these manuscripts are still unpublished though they seem to be extremely valuable. The immediate task is to prepare critical editions of such work and publish them. But this is not an easy task as it involves deciphering of the manuscripts written not only in Grantha script, but in Modi style (cryptic style) also. Besides, to prepare a critical edition, it is necessary to collect the various versions of the same manuscript from different parts of the country and arrange these manuscripts in a hierarchical and chronological order, based on the authors and the scribes. This stage of preparation facilitating the critical edition is called Heuristics. At this level itself, one encounters many problems. As different versions of the same manuscript are available, it becomes difficult to ascertain a particular one as authentic. Most of the times, the scholar depends upon the paleographic evidence based on the style of writing to find their hierarchy. This problem could be solved to some extent by the Carbon-dating system. One is expected to go through all the manuscripts of the same text and decipher and copy each one of them. One has to prepare a matrix in which one has to enter the various readings available in each manuscript, line by line and letter by letter, and then decide what can possibly be the correct reading and what are its variations caused by the negligence or ignorance of the scribe. Several mistakes take place in the manuscripts due to wrong intonation, ignorance or negligence of the scribe. In addition to this, certain scribes with their strong inclinations to certain systems or certain ideas, could have removed the original portions of the texts and might have replaced them by spurious and extraneous matter. The Pundit engaged for the preparation of critical editions of such medical texts, should be able to identify all these in detail and try to bring out the text, which is closer to the text of the original author. At this juncture, several modern technologies developed by the computer scientists are of great help. While copying each manuscript and putting them on the matrix, the 4 Saving Indiaís Medical Manuscripts Pundit involved in textual criticism, struggles hard to decipher the handwriting. Generally, these manuscripts are written in the Modi style. Besides, they do not have any punctuation marks. Lines or words that are wrongly written by the scribe will not be scored off for fear of damaging the palm leaf or birch bark on which they are written. On the other hand, some indication will be there, to say that such portions have to be deleted, which is not very clear. In fact, to decipher the scripts the expert actually depends upon pattern recognition. If he is not able to decipher a particular letter, he has to go through the various portions of the same manuscript, where the same type of letters occur. If these letters are recognized elsewhere based on the context, he would also be able to recognize the same in another place, where he is not able to decipher it easily. It may not be out of place to mention here, that plenty of discussions have taken place in the ‹åstras with regard to the variations of the same script in the hands of different scribes. In this connection, the computer scientists should carefully examine the algorithms developed by the Sanskrit scholars for identification of the letters and for some clues for pattern recognition. While deciphering letters and words, which are not very clear, the syntactic and semantic analysis comes into play. Experiments conducted in the last eight years have proven beyond doubt, that there is a fund of information and logic with regard to syntax and semantics in Sanskrit, which was developed over a period of thousands of years. This information available in Sanskrit is not only useful to the manuscriptologist to develop his own tools for textual criticism, but also for the computer scientist in Natural Language Processing (NPL). The other problem faced by the manuscriptologists, as mentioned above, is the spurious and extraneous matters, which have entered into the texts. This causes serious concern to the manuscriptologist because, it is not easy to distinguish between the original and the spurious. Now, computer scientists have developed tools for text-processing Development of Modern . .: M.A. Alwar and M.A. Ananth 5 which can be used to decipher the spurious matter. It is necessary to make available these tools in the hands of the manuscriptologist. Probably, such tools are available for the processing of English texts like, the Holy Bible etc. Efforts should be on to develop such tools for text processing in various Indian languages, especially Sanskrit. These things can happen only if the manuscriptologists and the computer scientists come together. Mutual interact- ion between these two is not an easy task, as they cannot put their ideas across the table due to the barriers in language, terminology etc. Continuous interaction alone helps them to understand each other to achieve this goal. Hence, it is necessary that the computer scientist try to understand the manuscriptologistís problems in detail and try to offer solutions. Otherwise, the manuscriptologist has to spend lots of time on smaller things which will come in the way of his creative work. In this way, it is suggested that the West should meet the East. This will not only result in benefits to the manuscriptologist; but also results in benefits to the computer scientist as he will be able to develop tools for deciphering the handwritten Grantha scripts written in different styles at different periods. Similarly, it will result in the generation of tools for deciphering varieties of hand- written scripts like Tigalari, Nand∂någar∂, Devanågar∂, Grantha, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada etc. Many a time computer scientists of the West are not in a position to know the difficulties faced by the computer scientists of India, who are confronted with hundreds of languages and a number of scripts. This will be an eye-opener for the computer scientists of the West, regarding the challenging tasks ahead of them. The tools developed by these scientists keeping in view the problems of the manus- criptologists of India, would be a big leap in the world of manuscriptology. Now, back to manuscripts written in Grantha script, especially medicinal manuscripts, the following course of action is suggested.