By Pawan Sharma
Dharamsala, August 5 – INSIDE THE Library of Tibetan Works and Archives here, a dedicated team of four Tibetans is busy these days taking steps to document and catalogue ancient manuscripts, the invaluable intellectual wealth of Himachal of which not many are aware.
The National Mission for Manuscripts, launched with the objective of identifying, documenting and sharing this intellectual wealth, has selected the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives for the purpose. The criteria for selection were the richness of manuscripts and availability of infrastructure to carry out the survey across the state.
Under this nationwide project, the Manuscript Resource Centre (MRC) of Dharamsala, which is one of the 24 MRCs selected across the country, has identified 8,764 Tibetan manuscripts in different monasteries of Himachal. One manuscript, Pranjnapa Ramita (professional wisdom), written by a Tibetan scholar on handmade paper, dates back to the 13th Century. One of the manuscripts identified is a Bon manuscript written prior to the 7th Century AD when Buddhism was not introduced in Tibet.
“The aim of this project is to survey, list and catalogue all manuscripts preserved in cultural centres, libraries, monasteries, temples and homes. In the first phase, we have been concentrating on institutions having Tibetan manuscripts. We have covered Bir, Rewalsar, Manali and Shimla so far. Soon, a survey will be launched in Solan, Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti where we hope to come across the most ancient manuscripts,” said Lobsang Shastri, incharge of the MRC, Dharamsala.
Of the 8,764 identified manuscripts, a majority are from the 14th and 15th centuries. Tibetans, while fleeing their homeland in 1959, had brought these to India. “ All these manuscripts are on handmade paper. We have manuscripts of all the Dalai Lamas,too,” said Shastri.
It is believed that India has the largest collection of manuscripts in the world. Experts fear the manuscripts might perish due to decay and wear and tear.
After the lengthy process of surveying, documenting and cataloguing, the rare manuscripts will be preserved through digitisation.
According to Bhupinder Pathak, Kangra District Informatics Officer, who is coordinating with the MRC, Dharamsala, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) was entrusted with the task of providing IT-based solution for storing the manuscript catalogue in machine-readable forms. The software will facilitate storing information in different Indian languages. To meet this objective, the culture informatics division of the NIC at New Delhi has developed a software, “e-Grantahavali NAMAMI”.
“Once the database is built, it will be available on the Internet,” he said.
The team, however, foresees problems in convincing lamas of monasteries in Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti to reveal the manuscripts in their possession in view of a series of idol thefts in the region in the past.
“People suspect our sacred motive of collecting information about the manuscripts. The real problem will be in Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur where ancient monasteries of 11th Century exist and may have rare manuscripts,” said Shastri.
After the work of identifying Tibetan manuscripts is over, the MRC team will try to find manuscripts in Sanskrit, Urdu and Arabic, for which help fromscholars in these fields would be taken.
