Manuscript and Indian Culture
Contents: Introduction. 1. Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscripts of Nepal: Continuity of ancient Indian textual tradition in the Himalaya/Shanker Thapa. 2. Heritage of Tibetan xylographs related to manuscripts of Indian origin/S K Pathak. 3. Pali manuscripts in Asian countries/B Kumar. 4. A brief note on manuscriptology/K Maheswaran Nair. 5. Ecological perception in ancient India through manuscript study/Swami Kamalasthananda. 6. Architectural motifs in Pala manuscript paintings of early medieval Bengal/S R Bandyopadhya. 7. Two indigenous manuscripts of Assam: a new paradigm in the history of traditional knowledge in India/Anita Bagchi. 8. Assam Buranji manuscript No. 43 and fortifications of Guwahati under Ahom Rule/Paromita Das. 9. Manuscript painting tradition in Assam: a concise overview/Raj Kumar Mazinder. 10. Writing the environment of early medieval Bengal: gleaning from Manuscripts (CE 600-1300)/K Ray. 11. History of Tripura: A study on manuscripts and tradition in Tripura/J B Bhowmik. 12. Manuscripts of Tripura: a cultural heritage/S Poddar and N Karmakar. 13. Mrigavati Kavya of Abdul Alim: A Bengali manuscript of medieval Bardhaman/R K Jana. 14. The sacred books of the east: a colonial representation/A B Chakraborty. 15. Manuscript: reflection of culture/Asok Kumar N.K. 16. The politics of religion: reading Shri Chaitanya between biographies/Jaydeep Chakrabarty. 17. Puya: the ancient manuscript tradition of Manipur/Ruma Sarma. 18. Gaoseng Faxian Zhuan: the earliest extant Chinese Manuscript on Indian kingdoms: a critical study/D Roy. 19. Manuscript: Language study of Lalitavistara Sutra/B Bhattacharya. 20. The world of Western Indian Manuscript painting in the 15th-16th century India/Swati Biswas. 21. Yogsangram: the 17th century Marathi Manuscript/Ravi Khangai. 22. Passages on music in Sivadharma corpus/A K Acharya. 23. Manuscripts and miniature paintings of Assam/Swadhinata Das.
India has the largest collection of manuscripts in the world. Millions of manuscripts are lying in libraries, museums and private collections in all over India. All are the valuable sources of knowledge especially of ancient Indian history and culture. Various type of scripts have been used for writing the manuscripts which are – Devanagari, Tiglari, Sarada, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Grantha, Tamil, Nandinagari, Old Newari, Persian and Arabic etc.
In the second half of the 18th century, a few British officers such as Sir William Jones (1746-1794), Sir Robert Chambers (1774-1779), Colin Mackenzie (1782-1806) took a deep interest for studying the Indian culture. They started collecting manuscripts, inscriptions and others antiquities for preserving cataloguing and research. Later, in the last half of the 19th century, the Government of India deputed few scholars for collecting the manuscripts in different parts of India. Since that time, the mission was started for collecting, preserving, cataloguing and editing the manuscripts on in and outside India.
The book is a collection of thoughtful articles from scholars and writers enumerates the different aspects of the Manuscript as well as the Great Indian Culture. This book will give some thoughtful insight to the reader in various aspects. (jacket)
