Shimla, Sep 30 (IANS) The National Mission for Manuscripts has documented and prepared a digital database of three million manuscripts, an official said here Friday.
‘In the past five years, we have managed to document a database of 30 lakh manuscripts in the country. This is just 20 percent of the total manuscripts available in the country,’ mission director Dipti S. Tripathi told IANS.
She said ‘a large number of old manuscripts on science and technology are available in the country, but there is a huge shortage of experts to interpret and use the traditional knowledge base’.
‘We have seven formula-based manuscripts on technology to make aircrafts in a Kolhapur museum (in Maharashtra). These are 1,000 to 1,500 years old,’ said Tripathi, who was here to address a two-day north zone vice chancellors conference that began Friday.
According to her, the oldest manuscript in the mission’s database is 1,500-years-old from the Rigveda.
‘Documentation is a difficult part, but its preservation is the real challenge,’ she added.
The mission was set up in October 2003 by the union ministry of culture for locating, documenting and conserving manuscripts in different languages in the country.
