Bibliographic Survey of Indian Manuscript Catalogues

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

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(xviii) Title in Indian languages have been transcribed in conformity with the current system of transliteration based on the U.S. Library of Congress practice. References will generally be found from the name of the original owner of the collection to the present owner / location, institution or collection (Wilson Collection, Bhandarkar Collection). See also references have been used to help the user in getting further information on the collection.
Entries have been annotated as deemed necessary, highlighting the names of editor, compilers, assistants, original owner of the collections, their source, quality and the condition of the manuscripts; the estimated total number of manuscripts in a collection is also mentioned. This was possible by verifying each of these catalogues or hand lists.
There is a separate language-wise table which shows the total number of manuscripts recorded in all these catalogues / hand lists. A separate Language index has also been provided, in which, under each language, an alphabetically list of institutions and collections names is given together with the corresponding entry numbers. In this, however, catalogues of Sanskrit / Prakrit / Apabhramsa manuscripts were not indexed separately as they form the largest segment under the language category. Moreover, it has been found that a large number of manuscript catalogues of modern Indian languages also list Sanskrit/Prakrti titles. Bhojpuri, Maithili, Bhasa, Rajasthani, etc. are grouped under Hindi, and Hindustani and Urdu are placed under Urdu for indixing purposes. A few catalogues of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Burmese, Sinhalese, and the neighbouring languages manuscripts are listed in the main body of the bibliography but they are not included in the Language Index as they do not strictly fall under the Indic language catagory. A majority of these catalogues also include manuscripts in other languages, such as Cruu/Hindustani and Pali. The editors feel justified to include in this index Pali and Tibetan languages manuscripts as they belong to the Sanskrit and Prakrit family, both in terms of language as well as content. A separate general index is added for better accessibility.
In any compilation of this nature, compilers has to continuously impose upon the goodwill and generous cooperation of the participant libraries. I gratefully acknowledge the help and support received from all of them.
I would like to thank many other people who made significant contributions to the compilation of this bibliography. This project was undertaken while I was with the Central Secretariat Library and its successful completion owes much to the support of the staff of Library in various ways. A few members among the staff must be singled out for their specific contributions. Madhuri Bhatia and Rajkishori Verma were always ready to search through the catalogues, journal volumes and shelves to discover some otherwise 'misplaced items from the library stacks. Noted contributions were also made by Dr. Atreyi Biswas and Dr Usha Kataria by consistently verifying the headings, romanization and name authority of all the records created from various sources,