15. Sometimes even well-intentioned scholars feel that quite a sufficient number of manuscripts has been collected and that the hope for a great discovery has no further chance of fulfilment. This is totally wrong, and the tendency which this reflects, namely, continued complacency or unwillingness to explore and the lack of venturesome spirit, is regrettable. Even in the collections already known, there exist earlier and more important works, which, because of the lack of painstaking examination, have been neglected, in preference to later and inferior works. There is no doubt that fuller and more careful exploitation of the manuscript material available, and more careful search for fresh manuscript material will tone up, enrich and raise the standard of Sanskrit research, of actual teaching now going on and of publication.
16. The discovery of the lost works of antiquity can extend the bounds of our knowledge, and even alter certain well-established notions about the nature and variety of ancient Indian thought and culture. There may yet remain, as indeed indications show, many a work which, if discovered, would bring in the present context a new significance to the pursuit of Sanskrit studies.
17. While in Sanskrit studies, it may legitimately be said that, in the West, the age of the great giants is past, as also the pioneer period when meticulous textual and manuscript work was undertaken there are enthusiastic scholars from abroad interested in specific works and branches of study who still come to India and manage to take away with them to countries abroad the manuscripts they want, in smaller or larger quantities. There is no way of stopping this steady
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flow of Indian manuscripts to outside countries. At the same time, owing to lack of facilities, Indian scholars have been forced to work on a restricted available material only, and in all branches they have always been constrained by circumstances and have never felt like embarking upon exploratory field work. This is true also in the field of manuscripts. Therefore the undertaking of the work of manuscript surveying would add a fresh dimension to our studies and bring more substantial grist to the mill of our research scholars.
18. The Commission was informed that the Central Government had an Art Treasures Purchase Committee and that rare manuscripts were also purchased now and then by this Committee. The very name of the Committee and the nature of the work it has, so far done show that manuscripts which may be valuable only from the artistic point of view-whether calligraphy or illumination-come within its scope. But manuscripts which are artistically noteworthy may not necessarily be of any special literary value for their contents. The objective of this Committee and its operation are such that they cannot meet in any manner the question of manuscripts as literary or intellectual material discussed here by us. From the point of view of quantity also, what this Committee could do for manuscripts would not touch even the fringe of countless collections of manuscripts lying in the country, which might not be distinguished by beautiful calligraphy or valuable miniatures and. illuminations, but Might possess unique significance for the study of the Indian mind and spirit.
19. It is not as if the question of manuscripts has not been duly emphasised. At least, those who have intimate contact with it have been, during the recent past, time and again, reading papers on the subject, and stressing it continuously in their addresses and communications at Conferences. In some of its Sessions. the All-India Oriental Conference also has passed resolutions calling upon Governments at the Centre and in States to devote their attention to this question of the surveying, safe-guarding, collecting and cataloguing of the available manuscripts. The general conditions of neglect which Sanskrit studies are facing all round do also affect the question of the manuscripts. The Pandit families and those in charge of religious institutions, where such collections of manuscripts exist, are all becoming less and less interested in the preservation of these manuscripts through both ignorance and penury; and though the danger of their being sold to foreign agencies cannot be said to be so grave to-day, there is a real danger of their wholesale destruction through neglect and through natural agencies (rain and damp, rats and mice and insects, rotting and being worm-eaten, and becoming brittle through age). Some of the owners are pathetically attached to these as heirlooms of their families, but have no facilities to maintain them in proper condition. All this imposes a great responsibility upon scholars, institutes and authorities to make a systematic and sustained effort to rectify and improve the situation by devising various methods by which these collections could be surveyed, brought under well-managed libraries, or at least helped to be better preserved in their original places of deposit, and utilised by scholars.
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20. It is needless to emphasise that, in the study of the past, the literary and the monumental evidences have to be taken together and coordinated in the work of interpretation of our civilisation. Often the monumental evidence can be satisfactorily interpreted only with adequate correlation with literary evidences. While from the scholarly point of view this is so, in actual practice it is found that the literary material is neglected, and though the authorities devote a good deal of attention to archaeological work, they do not think that it is a matter of equal to take care of the literary material lying in the manuscripts all over the country.
21. During its tours the Commission found that in many centres in North India, manuscript collections and libraries had been formed with large quantities of manuscripts taken from South India. All these South Indian manuscripts are written in the South Indian scripts, Grantha, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, and it cannot be said that there is in these centres an adequate staff conversant with these South Indian scripts to, be able to deal with these manuscripts. This difficulty does not arise in South Indian manuscript libraries where the bulk of the North Indian manuscripts on paper that have come in are in Devanagari script, which is known to all Sanskritists in the South. There is, indeed, difficulty in 'engaging an adequate number of well-paid South Indian Pandits or assistants in these North Indian libraries. Santiniketan had its collection made mostly of South Indian manuscripts which lay there in a condition of neglect, and these had eventually to be transferred to the Adyar Library in Madras. It would be necessary for these North Indian libraries with a large percentage of South Indian manuscripts to employ qualified South Indian hands; they are necessary not only for the preparation of the catalogues but also continuously for looking into these Manuscripts whenever scholars enquire for information and extracts, or request collation-work to be done with, those manuscripts.
22. The Commission saw, during its inspection of the work in the different manuscript libraries and of the work of editing texts undertaken at different centres, that the availability of more staff and facilities to consult other manuscripts of the texts taken up for editing could improve the work in manuscript libraries. Apart from the lack of funds for collecting manuscripts, there were cases where the libraries were woefully under-staffed for the purpose of examination of the manuscripts. The usual practice was to have the manuscripts examined by Pandits and Scribes, and then to have their accession list prepared. If this very first examination of the manuscripts is not made in a conscientious and scientific manner, the wrong identifications and the incompleteness in the account of the contents of the manuscripts will persist through all the further stages of cataloguing and research. Many of the codices contain more than one work. and quite a good number contain a host of minor works; and unless adequate care is taken at the very stage of primary listing, further stages in the cataloguing will be vitiated and many a work may be missed.
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23. In the work of the cataloguing also, there is no uniform method followed, and several of the catalogues are defective in respect of identifications and the references and comparative data presented. An enormous amount of literature is still embedded in the manuscripts, and however speedily our publications come out, a large number of works and authors and information about them would, for a long time to come, continue to be known only from the catalogues of manuscripts. Proper care should, therefore, be taken to see that the catalogue is informative as well as accurate. As numerous catalogues have now been published, it may not be necessary, in the opinion of some, to follow the classical method of the descriptive catalogue in which, irrespective of the importance or the much-printed nature of a work, many pages are taken by the reproduction of extracts of the beginnings and the ends of the manuscripts and other details from them. It has been suggested that nominal catalogues in tabular form, giving the essential details of the manuscript, its number, name, author, etc., might be adopted, and that more detailed descriptions and critical notes could be given in the Appendix in respect of those manuscripts in the collection which are rare and are of greater value. Both methods could be followed if proper economy was kept in view, and if no essential information. which would otherwise remain unknown, was slipped over. The question of the editing of texts by the manuscript libraries themselves is dealt with in the Chapter on Research.
24. From the foregoing observations, it is clear that, in the main, action should be taken in respect of manuscripts in two spheres, namely, at the Centre and in the States. Unless a Central Organisation was set up, a complete survey of the manuscript material all over the country could not be effectively planned and executed. A central policy backed up by Governmental authority is necessary, firstly to rouse the consciousness of the public and the owners in respect of the value of these manuscript treasures, and also to give an official status to those who would go out on the work of surveying and collecting manuscripts. Secondly, there may be a large number of owners of manuscripts who may not be willing to part with their family collections; but in such cases the Government can devise a method by which owners may be helped and given the facilities required- to preserve their manuscripts better and make them available for transcription, loan or consultation. Numerous witnesses pressed before the Commission this idea of a Central Department for the survey and collection of manuscripts. Shri C. D. Deshmukh emphasised the need for a Central MatrkaSaranya; and Shri S. A. Dange, Member of the Loka-Sabha, pointed out that the manuscript question deserved top priority. The actual institution of a Central Manuscripts Survey was suggested by many witnesses, some of whom gave also details of the Organisation and work of this Central Survey. The Central Manuscripts Survey should not interfere with the work which the State Governments and local Institutions are already doing in the field of manuscripts, but, keeping in touch with them, it should do all that is further possible by organising its own region-wise and language-wise branches. There could be four zonal
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branches, the Eastern, covering Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa; the Southern, covering Andhra, Madras, Kerala and Mysore; the Western, comprising Bombay State (Maharashtra and Gujarat), Madhya-Pradesh and Rajasthan; and the North-Northwestem, covering Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Panjab, and Jammu and Kashmir. The staffs of these branches should be composed of people conversant with the scripts of the regions covered by each, and should comprise those who would do peripatetic search and collection work, and those who would work at the office, recording accession lists and cataloguing the collections.
25. It is not as if there are no individuals or groups, as in the families owning manuscripts, who, out of public spirit or owing to their inability to maintain their collections, are prepared to present them to Government or to Public Institutions. It was brought to the notice of the Commission that sometimes offers were made; but no party or agency was available to receive or to be in a position to take care of and use the collection. A still larger number of cases existed in which a nominal consideration could induce owners to part with their manuscripts. In the sixties of the last century, when this manuscript collection work was about to be taken in hand by Government, it proposed to honour suitably the Pandits and the owners who presented their collections of manuscripts for public utilisation. It is well within our knowledge that manuscripts are still being collected or purchased for a mere song, either by Indian agents or by foreign scholars themselves, for foreign libraries and institutions. If legislative provision could be made to prevent historical and archaeological material from going out of the country, it is not known why similar provision could not or should not be made to prevent the exportation of literary material. The fact that a good mass of India's manuscript material has been taken out of the country is a sore point with many of our patrioticallyminded lovers of Sanskrit; and occasionally resolutions have been moved at the Sessions of the All-India Oriental Conference and other meetings urging upon the Government to move in the matter of recovering these manuscripts and bringing back these "exiles" to our country, though no practical way to do this could be suggested. In any case, further drain on our manuscript resources by their being quietly permitted to be taken out of the country must be put a stop to. However, both in respect of sale and export, as Well as internal collection work, it was pointed out by some witnesses that measures of force could be employed only With proper tact and care. For, there were owners perverse enough to run their collections underground or prevent anything being done with their manuscripts. A specialist witness, Dr. L. A. Ravi Varma. formerly Curator of the University Manuscripts Library and now of the Palace Manuscripts Library in Trivandrum, actually referred to an owner destroying a precious manuscript before the very eyes of the person who wanted to have it. We also hear of manuscripts being thrown into tanks and rivers rather than being handed over to others. As the Government already has an extensive revenue machinery and educational inspectorate, as also the newly started Public Relations Department, which reach out to the smallest unit of administration
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in the villages, adequate steps can now be taken by Government to enlighten the owners about the public and cultural value of their manuscript possessions. There are, indeed, many stupid persons who do not feel any qualms in throwing out their manuscripts into the river, which appears to be a time-honoured way of relieving oneself of this kind of unwanted burden. Still more foolish persons were reported to have used manuscripts to meet the scarcity of fuel. Shri Justice A. S. P. Ayyar of the Madras High Court narrated the story of a Nair servant who produced hot water at short notice by stuffing the oven with the bundles of the palm leaves of the Astanga-Hrdaya. It is said ,that Dr. Ganganatha Jha discovered the manuscript of Udyotakara's Nyaya-Varttika from the high window of a Pandit's house where it was stuffed to prevent rain water from splashing inside. Anecdotes of discoveries of manuscripts from bazars, where they had been weighed and sold as waste paper used for packing groceries, were also not wanting.
26. It is not possible for anyone interested in the culture and the heritage of the nation, or for the authorities who owe a duty towards national cultural material, not to Day heed to these distressing facts. The magnitude and the sheer geographical extent over which manuscripts are scattered make it inevitable that, unless the matter is taken up at Central and State levels. this steady tale of destruction or loss cannot be prevented, and what still remains cannot be conserved and utilised.
27. So far as the Central Office of the proposed Manuscripts Survey is concerned, there should be, first, a periodical Bulletin which would publish lists or brief accounts of the manuscripts surveyed, transcribed, loaned or collected from time to time; secondly, there should be more detailed catalogues of the collections made and examined; and thirdly, a series of critical editions of the most valuable manuscripts discovered from time to time. It is not necessary' that all these works should be carried on only by the members of the staff of the proposed Central Manuscripts Survey; the help and co-operation of outside scholars could also be recruited. Another important work which this Central Manuscripts Survey should do is to acquire film-copies and photostats of important manuscripts in foreign libraries, and to help as a central clearing house for Indian scholars who want to enquire about manuscripts in Indian and foreign libraries (including those in Nepal), and assist them by procuring loan of copies of manuscripts.
28. The availability of mechanical facilities today for micro- filming manuscripts and preserving them within a short space, and sending them out for use, through micro-film readers, even by scholars at a distance, make the work of manuscript preservation and utilisation more easy than it was sometime back. Micro-filming facilities are now available in almost all foreign libraries. In India, however, these facilities are available only in a very few places. It is sad to reflect that a manuscript can be obtainded by an Indian scholar, much more easily and quickly
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from a European or American library, than from a neighbouring Indian library. Library services in this direction should be modernised, and made available in all centres where there are accumulations of manuscript collections. Consistent with rules governing the safety of manuscripts and indemnity against loss, and the exceptionally bad condition in which some manuscripts may be, libraries should make their manuscripts available to responsible scholars through accredited official or non-official institutions. No library which did not afford such facilities, it should be understood, could look forward to financial assistance from the authorities.
29. Coming to the States and manuscript libraries already existing there, either under official or under non-official auspices, the Commission found that, in many cases, the primary work of collecting manuscripts had ceased. The authorities remained content with receiving casual presentations or making stray purchases. Sometimes the record under the heading of collection work made by libraries showed that the collection was no more than change of hands or administration, of collections going from one part to another of the same building. Where such changes helped- better preservation and access to scholars, they were to be welcomed; otherwise this merely resulted in change of names and numbers and difficulties of tracing manuscripts. Regular field or peripatetic work for the search of manuscripts should be undertaken by these Institutions; and it should be borne in mind that an eye should be kept on intense search directed towards the discovery of specific masterpieces which are possibly still hiding. The question of a thorough examination at the very initial stages of accession has already been emphasized. It was found that the staff required for this work was not adequate in many libraries. Similar was the case in respect of accommodation, which was very limited in many manuscript libraries or sections. There were no uniform methods, followed in the libraries, for the use of chemicals or oils for the preservation of manuscript material, or for mending damaged manuscripts. The National Archives in Delhi have systematised processes which could be publicised to a greater extent, and the libraries directed or helped to employ these processes or to utilize the services. of the National Archives. The consultation and loaning facilities afforded by many libraries were also not up to the mark. Sometimes it took a few days even for scholars working in the same building, to get on loan a manuscript deposited in another block of the building. The reading-room facilities for those who would use the manuscripts within the premises also require to be improved. All manuscript libraries should have a complete card-index of their collections both by authors and works. The rarer manuscripts, noteworthy for antiquity, special materials, script, or illumination, should be kept in special show-cases, which of course is done in some of the better equipped manuscript collections. Generally, the Manuscript Library in any State, as compared to a Museum or even a Record Office, is far less cared for. A properly kept Manuscript Library, with its show-cases of rarer exhibits, would form one of the attractions to the citizens and to visitors in a particular locality.
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30. Reference has already been made to cataloguing work. We found in our visits to the libraries the following deficiencies or difficulties in respect of catalogue work:-
(1) Some libraries had not at all examined their collections;
(2) Some had mere accession lists; and
(3) Some had prepared detailed catalogues, and had even made the press-copies of these ready, but could not print them.
At the same time, these institutions and libraries engaged themselves in other publication work, e.g. of text-editions and expositions. Financial assistance should be given to these libraries and institutions, earmarked for examining and cataloguing their manuscripts, and also for printing and publishing the catalogues. It is our feeling that where there is concentration of manuscripts, institutions and libraries should, as far as possible, give priority to cataloguing work over the work of editing texts and publishing studies. The first duty of a library is to make its contents known to the world of scholars.
31. The work of publishing texts can no doubt be carried on very conveniently in a library having manuscript resources. But as we have pointed out in the Chapter on Research, in some libraries this editorial work does not happen to be done properly and in a critical manner. It would, indeed, be better if such libraries concentrated on cataloguing work and provided facilitie's for outside scholars to exploit their manuscript material. We should not be understood as saying anything against the texts-serics which many manuscript libraries are publishing. On the other hand, it is our 'firm view that each manuscript library should publish its own series of texts. The anxiety of the Commission is only that these editions should be carefully prepared, so that they attain the required critical standard and can be useful for further scholarly work. Owing to the exigencies of departmental transfers and-promotions and certain other local considerations, it is found in libraries and manuscript collections that not infrequently persons not specially qualified happen to be in charge of manuscript libraries and their cataloguing and editorial work. It is necessary, in the interest of the manuscript work, that only properly qualified persons are in charge of manuscript libraries, and that they do their work with the help and advice of Committees of scholars interested in various lines of research relating to manuscripts and critical editorial work.
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