Country’s oldest manuscript out in brand new prints

The publication,made possible because of an association with Japan’s Institue of Oriental Philosophy and the Soka Gokkai Institute,has meant 250 copies being sent to India and free access to scholars interested in studying it. The original is in the National Archives’ Godrej vaults,too precious to be displayed and very reluctantly laid out even after prior permission.

Buddhist expert Prof Lokesh Chandra,who played a key role in getting the National Archives and the Japanese into the tieup,calls it “the glory of India — the Lotus Sutra has deep pan-Asian significance for a more meaningful study of all,Sanskrit,Chinese,Korean and Japanese languages and literature. Mantras in this even form a part of Gandhiji’s Bhajanavali — even the three monkeys associated with Gandhi are from the Lotus Sutra. The publishing and easy access that scholars will get has unimaginable potential for scholarly research.”

For the Buddhist-Japanese organisation,which will incur the expenditure and help the National Archives restore the original free,these are not just manuscripts but have a spiritual significance. Dr Daisaku Ikeda of the Saka Gokkai International terms this “(by) no means a mere relic of a past culture… it represents an unlimited philosophy of hope,a philosophy of happiness,a philosophy of peace.”

Says National Archives assistant director Jaya Ravindran,“They had arrived utterly disintegrated,we have helped recondition them and took care of it. We are lucky that birch bark was used as it is natural and far more resilient than paper.”

Now in glazed paper facscimile prints,the original set of manuscripts was discovered in three stages. When the Wazir of Gilgit informed the Maharaja of Kashmir of the discovery,he got them examined by a Sir Auriel Stein,who first identified them as dating back to the fifth century. They have been known as the Gilgit manuscripts from then on,with a portion of them kept in state libraries.

Apart from their content and literary significance,they are also said to be among the finest examples of decorated books in Indian history. They are written in “northern cursive script of a stylised and conventional form,a variety of what was prevalent in the Gilgit and Central Asian period and is a variety of the late Gupta script”,says a scholar at the Archives.

National Archives director general Prof Mushir ul Hasan says such collaborations help preserve documents and provide them a much wider audience. “The Iranian Cultural Centre is helping preserve and reprint Persian manuscripts. For example,a unique 16th-century manuscript in Persian on how ill birds are to be treated is among the six released last month.”

Hasan says the next work to be made accessible with the help of the Iranian centre is the large Inayat Jung Collection. “What was generally believed about the Mughals was that they were not very good at archiving. But these 1,20,000 documents have indicated a very elaborate system of archiving,filing and notification. We are nearly done with it,and in two months propose to digitise the whole thing and make it available on the web.”