Protect me from oil, water, insects and from loose binding. Above all, protect me, Lord, from falling into the hands of a fool.’’ Sometime in the 16th century, a scribe humorously put this down after inscribing a full-length epic in parched sheets of palm leaves. And now, this plea of this anonymous scribe is finally getting heard.

Manuscript preservation is suddenly being looked upon with renewed interest. They are tumbling down from dusty shelves in homes of collectors and temples, as surveyors under the government-backed National Mission for Manuscripts scour the countryside.

Since February 2003, around 1,200 men and women have been touring across the country to create a national database of surviving manuscripts, some so old that the written words sometimes ‘‘crumble to dust’’ to touch.

Some states like Tamil Nadu have yielded more than five lakh manuscripts. While Manipur has thrown up 50,000 old documents, Orissa boasts nearly 3.5 lakh manuscripts. Bounties include a forgotten script—the Sylheti Nagri —that was used in south Assam.

It is estimated that there are five million surviving documents in 90 ancient scripts and 450 languages in India. The Mission’s task is to build a database and digitise these. By this December, information on 1.6 million manuscripts, including the name of the text, location and owners, will be released online.

‘‘This is the biggest exercise in cultural mapping and inventory building of this kind,’’ says Sudha Gopalakrishnan, the Mission’s director. About Rs 18 crore has been spent to locate the documents written in bamboo leaves, birch barks and palm.

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