Bibliographic Survey of Indian Manuscript Catalogues

Author(s): Subhash C Bishwas, M K Prajapati
Publisher: Eastern Book Linkers

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PREFACE
India perhaps has more manuscript collections than any other country in the world. These manuscripts are in various languages and format; and they are written in different scripts, such as, Devanagari, Sharada, Grantha, Kannada, Telugu, etc. on a variety of materials : birch-bark, palm leaf, paper, leather, copper-plate, textile, stone, clay-tablet, wodden board, and what not. They deal with the socio-cultural history, language and literature, science and technolgy, art and crafts of India. In other words, they reflect the growth and development of human knowledge in the Indian sub-continent over the past few centuries. Some of these are examplary in nature for the study of manuscriptology in India.
These manuscripts are stored in various libraries of the world, mostly in India but many also in other countries, in academic institutions, monasteries, mosques, temples, etc. In addition, there are hundreds and thousands of them in private collections. A large part of these have not yet been catalogued; some are not even recorded. In the middle of nineteenth century several door to door surveys were conducted in various parts of India, by eminent scholars, mostly under the patronage of the then British Indian government, and they listed the manuscripts with the primary objective of saving these valuable documents on Indian cultural heritage.
The present survey sponsored by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) is wider in its scope and objective. Its aim was to locate and record the various catalogues, hand lists,etc. of Indian manuscript collections (not the actual manuscripts). It also aimed to find out the number of catalogues published in different languages and how many manuscripts there were in each of these collections. This bibliographical survey of Indian manuscript catalogues, hand-lists, etc. will give an idea of the size and scope of the collections. To fulfil the said task we visited some 80 prominent libraries / institutions in India throughout the country and checked their collections and manuscript catalogues. We also visited during 1989 - 1991 several major collections of Indian manuscripts in Europe (United Kingdom, France and Germany).
This survey has also brought out the fact that only a small percentage of these manuscript collections have been catalogued systematically. In a majority of cases only hand lists were prepared, giving some basic data-author, title, language, script, etc. Every institution we visited expressed their concern about and the difficulties they face in getting cataloguers with adequate knowledge and language background. Very few people show any interst in specialising in manuscript cataloguing. This is because there are very few openings for those who acquire this kind of special skill and, secondly, the remuneration offered is not attractive enough for young scholars to take up this type of work to make a proper living.