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.

Even though terracotta evidences and rock edicts show that the subcontinent’s written tradition dates back 1,500 years, few manuscripts have survived. The oldest manuscript—Buddhist literature written in Kharoshti script, the style that developed in North Kashmir—dates back to the 6th century. This was found in the Gilgit region of Kashmir in the 1930s.

The Mission plans to document all the 25 variations of the Brahmi script, the oldest known script dating back to 3rd century BC, as well as the Kharoshti and the Persian-Arabic stock.

But it was the finding of birch bark Buddhist scrolls, spotted in old jars by Taliban refugees, that stirred the academia in 1994. While several international libraries bought the ancient fragments, Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts took the initiative to document them. It collected database of 2.5 lakh manuscripts, including Berlin’s Staats Bilbiotheque, which possesses one of the largest manuscript collection outside India at 7,000.

India’s diversity of scripts and languages will now travel to Frankfurt’s Museum for Angewandte Kunst. Opened last week, 89 manuscripts and writing implements will be shown in the exhibition titled The Word is Sacred, Sacred is the Word.

The attempt is to give a broad perspective of Indian philosophy. Among the exhibits are a rare Bangla Kali mantra, Shakti hymns written on a piece of silk cloth and a Holi Quran composed in 10 brass plates. Others include chapters on arithmetic puzzles, special manuscripts on how to tend to horses and a thesis on Indian architecture.

At least three manuscripts relating to Jaydeva’s Gita Govinda demonstrate how scribes competed to make their work unique. For example, a 19th century manuscript from Orissa dedicates popular songs written in praise of Lord Krishna in the shape of a beaded garland. The other two pieces are inscribed in pages cut in the shape of animals.

The writing implements—decorative ink pots, penknives, book rests etc.—signify the seriousness each scribe gave to the art of writing.