WORKSHOP ON MANUSCRIPTOLGY AND PALEOGRAPHY

The Kalakosa Division of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts organized a workshop on Manuscriptology and Paleography as its headquarters in New Delhi from 3rd to 10th January, 2003.  This was the ninth in a series of workshops on the subject.  Eight workshops had been organized earlier in various centres of Indological studies in the country – Delhi, Pune, Kolkatta, Mysore, Thiruvananthapuram and Varanasi.

The purpose of organizing these workshops is to raise a second line of young Sanskrit scholars in the field of critical scholarship in the country.  Literature available in Sanskrit and Prakrit, with an unbroken continuity of at least five thousand years, is vast, varied and rich.  Only a small portion of this valuable literature has so far been published while the rest is still lying buried in various libraries in manuscript form.  Very few of the published works have been critically edited according to scientific methodology of textual criticism.  One additional hurdle in this area is that all ancient and medieval manuscripts and written in a multitude of scripts, such as Grantha, Sarada, Nawari, Nandinagari etc., some of which are no longer used for writing and printing.  There are few competent scholars among the young students and teachers who can decipher these scripts and use the first hand manuscripts material for study, research and preparation of critical editions according to the scientific methodology.

With the view to overcoming this deficiency in Indian classical scholarship, the idea of holding the training workshop, the idea of holding the training workshop was conceived as early as 1994 by IGNCA and the curricula and modality for holding the workshops were formulated in-house.  The workshops have been successful and have been well received by scholars.

The ninth workshop, in New Delhi, was inaugurated on January 3, 2003, by Prof. N.R. Shetty, Member Secretary, IGNCA.  Besides the resource persons from IGNCA – Prof. G.C. Tripathi, Dr. N.D. Sharma, Dr. V.S. Shukla – experts from outside were invited to give lectures.  They included Prof. K.K. Thaplial, retired Professor of Ancient Indian History, Lucknow University Dr. Prakash Pandey, Dy. Director of Rashtriya Sanskrit Pratishthan, Pt. Satkari Mukhopadhyay, former Co-ordinator, Kalakosa Division, Prof. B.B. Choubey, Director VVRI, Hoshiarpur, Prof. R.K. Pandey, Director (Research) Lal Bhahadur Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth and Dr. Ratna Basu of Calcutta University.  The participants were from IGNCA as well as other institutions involved in Sanskrit studies such as Lal Bhahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth and Vrindavan.

Prof. Tripathi spoke on the ‘History of writing in India and principles of textual criticism.’  Prof. Thaplial in his interesting lectures taught the development of the Brahami script from Mauryan to the Gupta period.  Prof. R.K. Pandey discussed the general principles of editing.  Dr. Prakash Pandey discussed the general principles of editing.  Dr. Prakash Pandey taught the Sarada scripts and also the methods of the transcription and collation.  Prof. Choubey delivered a lecture on the ‘Methodology of editing on various texts.’  Pt. Mukhopadhyaya’s lecture was on ‘Forms and types of manuscripts and method of handling them.  He also demonstrated the inherent relations among all Indian and South-East Asian scripts.  Dr. Ratna Basu discussed ‘Conservation and preservation of the manuscripts’.  She also delivered lectures on ‘Cataloguing of the manuscripts.’  Prof. Shetty released two IGNCA publications. – The Concept of ‘Sunya’ and Kalatattvakosa vol.5 – during the course of the workshop.

Report by Ms. Ranjana Ray

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