The fumigation chamber to conserve palm-leaf manuscripts at the Oriental Research Institute (ORI) was inaugurated by the Minister for Higher Education, IT and BT C..N. Ashwath Narayan here on Thursday.
This is part of the ongoing efforts to conserve the collection of about 30,000 palm leaf bundles and Sanskrit manuscripts at the ORI including the rare and complete treatise of Kautilya’s Arthashastra.
The Minister said ORI was a repository of knowledge and a slice of Indian heritage as enshrined in the invaluable manuscripts collected over decades. Appreciating the ongoing efforts in conservation and digitisation Mr. Ashwath Narayan said the knowledge and ancient Indian wisdom enshrined in the manuscripts would be easily available to scholars for research which would add to the knowledge base.
The Minister said the future of the country’s growth and progress is dependent on knowledge and the NEP-2020 was poised to bring in revolutionary changes in the learning mechanism. In post-independent India NEP 2020 was the best policy enunciated by the government and the new education system will propel growth and scientific progress.
‘’There was a time when the State was spearheading growth but fell behind others over a period of time but is now again poised for leapfrogging ahead of others’’, the Minister added.
University of Mysore Vice-Chancellor G. Hemantha Kumar said conservation of manuscripts is a prelude to the ongoing digitalization exercise being taken up in collaboration with the Mythic Society, Bengaluru. An MoU was signed between the University of Mysore under which the ORI functions, and the Mythic Society in February. The first phase entailing cleansing and conservation will take two years after which the scanning, digitization and hosting a website will be taken up in a phase-wise manner.
The 30,00 bundles of palm-leaf manuscripts contains nearly 22 lakh leaves of which 8 lakh leaves have been subjected to cleaning through a process approved by the conservation experts. This entails dry cleaning, fumigation, solvent cleaning after which the manuscripts are laced with lemon grass oil. Once full dry, they are wrapped in starch-free red cloth. The cataloguing and digitization process will be taken up subsequently.
The imperatives of digitizing the manuscripts not only stems from the need to make them available for scholars across the world but also to preserve them as some of the palm-leaf manuscripts are disintegrating. V. Nagaraj, Secretary, Mythic Society; Ramapriya, Director, ORI; and others were present.
