INDIAN MANUSCRIPTS: Earlier this month I thought about blogging on an article about a project to conserve ancient (and more recent) manuscripts in India, on the grounds that there might be an Old Testament pseudepigraphon or two tucked among them. But then I thought that was reaching too far.

Scholars catalog ancient manuscripts to preserve 4,000-year history of India

Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post

Sunday, June 26, 2005

[...]

And so it goes, as India's 30,000 manuscript hunters fan out nationwide, seeking the nation's heritage in old temples, madrassas, mosques, monasteries, libraries and homes.

Launched two years ago, the National Mission for Manuscripts is a five- year project to catalog for the first time India's ancient documentary wealth and ensure that basic conservation practices are followed to halt their rapid decay. Officials say that India is the largest repository of manuscripts in the world, with an estimated 5 million texts in hundreds of languages.

Linguistic scholars and history students involved in this adventurous hunt for ancient volumes use not only expertise but also social skills, coaxing and cultural sensitivity to gain access to manuscripts.

[...]

The manuscript project's officials say the nationwide survey will open a window to India's ancient knowledge systems: religion, astronomy, astrology, art, architecture, science, literature, philosophy and mathematics.

"We are creating a manuscript map of India. The survey will present new facets to our intellectual heritage," says Sudha Gopalakrishnan, chief of the National Mission for Manuscripts. The project will not take the volumes from their owners but merely document what is available and help in conservation.

"The key abstracts of all the ancient knowledge found in our manuscripts will be available digitally for the world to see," Gopalakrishnan says

[...]

The oldest manuscripts that India possesses are a set of sixth century Buddhist texts that were found buried in the hills of Kashmir about 60 years ago. In the last two years, the surveyors have found rare ancient Sanskrit and Arabic treatises on such subjects as diabetes, astrophysics, interpretation of dreams, surgical instruments, concepts of time and the art of war. A 400-year- old handwritten Koran was found in a locket measuring 3 inches.

[...]

It seems I was wrong. Recently, while going through our list of texts for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project, I noticed that one of the documents, the Words of Gad the Seer, being prepared by Dr. Meir Bar-Ilan, survives in a single eighteenth-century Hebrew manuscript from Cochin, India. Let's hope that the National Mission for Manuscripts finds more like it.