Over 3,400 rare manuscripts in 5 languages await conservation in Aurangabad University

AURANGABAD: As many as 3,414 rare manuscripts written in five languages and 11 scripts, and which run into over eight lakh pages, await conservation in a city-based university, an official said on Thursday. These manuscripts are in the custody of the Knowledge Resource Centre (KRC) of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, he said.

"Rare 3,414 manuscripts containing over eight lakh pages are yet to be conserved. This rare material written in five languages and 11 scripts can be made available to scholars, amateurs and further generations if it is conserved in time," KRC's director Dr Dharmaraj Veer told PTI. These manuscripts are very old and the pages of some of them are now stuck to each other, he said. "In order to digitise these rare documents, we first need to conserve them. There are 19 pictorial manuscripts, 39 royal charters, 92 engraved inscriptions, 18 Marathi engraved inscriptions, 48 antiquities and 3,198 other manuscripts," Veer added.

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The manuscripts are mainly related to Warkari and Mahanubhav sects of Hinduism and date back to the period between 15th and 19th centuries. These manuscripts reflect the social, cultural and historical life of those times, he said. The manuscripts are written in Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Urdu and Hindi. They are in Modi, Sundari, Subhadra and Ank scripts, among others. Most of this material is not published and hence it holds a literary significance, the official added.

"We had earlier sent a proposal for the conservation of these manuscripts to our university and other institutions. But nothing happened on that front so far. We have a plan to conserve and digitise these manuscripts and to develop an art gallery for this rare material. But this entire exercise would cost nearly Rs 4.62 crore," Veer said.

Caretaker of these manuscripts, Chakradhar Koti, said, "This is a precious material and should be maintained for people so that they can study it. The topics of these manuscripts are different and contain material related to Mahanubhav sect, saint literature, ayurveda, astrology, mathematics, etc. This material should be conserved in a scientific manner."