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CASE STUDY : “CONSERVATION OF PAPER DOCUMENT”
VISMAY H. RAVAL
Introduction:
Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology is one of the premere Institute in India which houses the treasure of invaluable and irreplaceable thousands of manuscripts in its premises. By invaluable contributions from Agamaprabahkar Muni Sri Punyavijayaji Maharaj for his scholarly interest in discovering various manuscripts lying in with different people or repositories and bringing them at one place, and from Shri Kasturbhai Lalbhai who has encouraged the Muni Shree's effort by making arrangement for the set up of the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology for the preservation of manuscripts and their use for research. As a result the Institute was inaugurated by the then Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1963. Today, the Institute has a rich collection of nearly seventy five thousand manuscripts of different subjects, including an encouraging number that have been gifted for the purpose of custody and preservation.
The Institute has been chosen by National Mission for Manuscripts as one of the regional center, and by the guidance of NMM, the Institute has both Manuscript Resource Center and Manuscript Conservation Center. It was recently established, and still growinga Manuscript Conservation Center in Ahmedabad while carrying out preventive conservation work a handwritten paper document (recently gifted) was found in a badly damaged condition, and later was decided to give immediate attention for curative conservation treatment. Description:
The document is believed to be more than 350 years old according to the mention date on the document (Vikram Samvat 1696). The shape of the document is rectangular with the length of 66.5 cms) and width of 23.4 cms. Writing has
