Bibliographic Survey of Indian Manuscript Catalogues

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

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Weber's Catalogue of Sanskrit Manuscripts in Berlin (1853) followed by Theodor Aufrecht's Catalogue of the Bodleian Library's Sanskrit Manuscripts (1859).
Published catalogues of Indian manuscripts vary considerably in their formats. Some are essentially no more than lists compiled for some immediate and practical end-may be related to a library, an exhibition, a private collection or a sale; a few others may focus primarily on the academic content or some specific aspect of literary history. In many such cases the availability of manuscripts is a secondary consideration.
The present bibliography has been compiled following Klaus Ludwig Janert's An Annotated Bibliography of the Catalogues of Indian Manuscripts, Pt. 1 (1965). This has been reflected in the detailed and exhaustive annotations, system of arrangement and crossreferences. Most of the catalogues listed here were personally examined by visiting the libraries in India and a few prominent ones in Europe. There are 187 catalogues/hand lists which were found listed in or referred to in various bibliographic sources but they could not be identified in the libraries visited. 23 such catalogues were included here from Janert's Annotated Bibliography, for which we are grateful to Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden. Their inclusion is justified keeping in mind the larger interest of the scholars. In these entries the library location code is missing. 87 catalogues were published under some series, with the name of the series mentioned in the descriptive part of the catalogue entry. We found 110 catalogues / lists of manuscripts published as journal articles.
While Janert listed 375 manuscript catalogues in 1965, we have identified over 1100 titles (more than 2000 volumes). One additional feature of this bibliographic survey is that it records the locations of these catalogues following the practice as in a union catalogue. Other than the few European libraries we checked and recorded the holdings of 69 Indian institutions and libraries.
There is no need to justify the importance of manuscript catalogues. We have observed that adequate attention was not being paid by major Indian academic and research libraries in collecting and maintaining Indian manuscript catalogues. It is sad to record that not a single library in India possesses even 50% of the total number of catalogues published in this country. Very few institutions are acquiring systematically catalogues of manuscripts. Even when they do they seems to prefer the catalogues of only a few selected institutions. Strangely enough, even such institutions as are meant for research and development of Sanskrit language and literature have paid little attention to strengthen their collection of catalogues of Sanskrit manuscripts. Similarly, National Library, Calcutta, a repository library since 1954 for materials printed in India has only a small number of these bibliographical tools. The Department of Sanskrit, University of Madras, which has the responsibility of compiling the New Catalogus Catalogorum (NCC), has not bought any new catalogue of manuscripts during the last two decades. It has published a list of 400 catalogues and hand lists acquired and used in preparing the NCC.