Manuscripts in Pune University go digital

With the process of digitising turning out to be the best way to preserve documents, the University of Pune is making digital copies of the over 300-year-old 4,500 handwritten manuscripts, stocked at Jayakar Library.

This initiative was taken at the behest of the National Mission for Manuscripts, functioning under the Union ministry of tourism and culture. The mission works to unearth and preserve the vast manuscript wealth of the country.

According to the head of the department of library sciences, SK Patil, it will take about six months to complete the digitisation process.

“After this, we will also provide an access to history and language researchers on the varsity’s intranet,” he said.

So far, the university has digitised 350 manuscripts. These manuscripts are in Sanskrit, Marathi, Pali and Kannada.

“The library has Rig Veda Asamhita Astaka, Samveda, Ayurveda, Gita and others in the hand-written format,” said Patil. “These were written by the scholars in the 15th and 16th centuries.”

However, these are not the original copies. Scholars have copied the text from the original books in their own handwriting. Some manuscripts run into 300 to 600 pages.

The varsity has spent around Rs9 lakh to buy a scanner to scan these manuscripts. After the scanning, black dots and the yellowish colour appear in the digital copies. Two software engineers are removing the dots and the colour,” he said.