muktalib.org

PONDICHERRY, INDIA, August 9, 2007: An amazing resource to the world scholarly community through a collaborative agreement between the Muktabodha Indological Research Institute, the French Institute of Pondicherry and the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient (French School of Asian Studies) is now made available on the Internet. These 1144 recent paper Devanagari transcripts (containing over 2000 mostly Shaiva texts and over 200,000 pages) were commissioned or copied by scholars of the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) and the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient (EFEO) over a period of more than thirty years. Muktabodha has been preserving Sanskrit texts and manuscripts by microfilm and digitization for the last ten years and since 2003 has been disseminating core Shaiva texts both as photographic facsimiles and as searchable e-texts to the world scholarly community via its on-line digital library. The combined effort, commitment, resources and experience of these three organizations has made it possible to make this major collection available. The paper transcripts of the IFP are a core component of the “Shaiva Manuscripts in Pondicherry” collection which in recognition of its importance was deemed a UNESCO “Memory of the World” Collection in 2005, in response to an application jointly submitted by the IFP, the EFEO, and the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM), an initiative of the Indian Central Government. This is the largest collection of Shaiva Siddhanta texts in the world. Many of these Saiddhantika texts are among the paper transcripts. The transcripts are clearly written in the well-known Devanagari script, whereas many of the original manuscripts from which they have been transcribed, many of which it would be difficult to trace today, are in other less well-known South Indian scripts, notably Grantha. Go to source and explore the depths of their extensive collection.

Post Views: 975