BHUBANESWAR, INDIA, May 9, 2014 (Times Of India): Thousands of significant Sanskrit and Hindi manuscripts written on palm leaves kept in University of the Punjab in Lahore and University of Dhaka will soon be digitized by Government of India.
Director of National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) Prafulla Mishra said NMM will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran Culture House (ICH), New Delhi, for the digitization work. ICH has already been digitizing Persian and Arabian manuscripts in Lahore and Dhaka.
Mishra said there were around 9,500 Sanskrit and Hindi manuscripts in Punjab University, the largest and oldest seat of higher learning in Pakistan established in 1882. The collection includes around 2,000 palm leaf writings. Besides Hindi and Sanskrit, the stock includes texts in Prakrit, Telugu, Sharada, Tamil, and Nandinagari languages. The over 90-year-old Dhaka University has over 10,000 such texts. Some of these scripts are over 1,000-year-old while many others are of pre-independence era, Mishra said.