Much of India’s traditional wisdom lies shrouded in classical languages and in manuscripts that are turning brittle and are threatened with extinction. Most of such manuscripts are owned privately with owners being secretive and possessive. Modest estimates put the number of these manuscripts at around one million.

But Peter Scharf, professor of Sanskrit at Brown University in the US, says their number may range from one million to five million. According to Dr N V Ramachandran, director, Asian Classics Input Project, Palakkad, oldest known palm-leaf manuscript was of the 6th century while the oldest paper manuscript belongs to 10th century. B Krishnamurthy, director (strategy), Vyoma Linguistic Labs Foundation, Bangalore, says his search for Sanskrit manuscripts on the Internet has revealed 434 sources of the extant manuscripts in India.

With IT revolution providing accessibility to the remotest recesses of knowledge sources, there is huge demand to bring all the traditional Indian knowledge, principally in Sanskrit, but considerable portion in other classical languages too, into public domain. The NDA government led by Atal Behari Vajpayee took the first visionary step in this direction by setting up the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) in 2002. Since then, some headway has been made in transcribing some manuscripts, mainly belonging to Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha medicinal system. But much remains to be done. More.

See: Deccan Herald

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