Leaves for the World

The Gilgit manuscripts form one of the oldest collections in the world.

From the early 8217;30s, the government of Jammu and Kashmir has put in a lot of effort to preserve the Gilgit manuscript, one of the oldest manuscript collections in the world.

The effort has paid off. The Union Tourism Ministry recently awarded the Jammu and Kashmir Archives Department for preserving this rare treasure. And now the manuscript collection, which was excavated from Gilgit, has been nominated for inclusion in UNESCO8217;s World Register 2006-20078212;along with the Rigveda.Inclusion in the register would make the manuscripts of international significance.

Though India has thousands of rare manuscripts, the I.A.S. Tamil Medical manuscript, the Saiva manuscripts in Pondicherry and Archives of the Dutch East India Company are the only registration from India so far.

Called Vijananidhi or manuscript treasure, the Gilgit manuscript collection in the possession of the National Archives of India, New Delhi, and also the Sri Pratap Singh Museum in Srinagar is an unmatched treasure for Buddhist studies and also for the study of the evolution of Sanskrit, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Tibetan literature. Though experts differ on the date of these manuscripts, they are believed to have been written through the 5th to 6th centuries AD. Some other manuscripts that were discovered in the succeeding centuries have also been classified as being part of the Gilgit collection.

The manuscripts were discovered in parts. While the main volume was discovered in 1931 in Gilgit, now in PoK, and contains four sutras from the Buddhist canon, including the famous Lotus Sutra, another lot was discovered during a 1938 excavation by Madhusudhan Koul. The first corpus was discovered by chance by cattle grazers. They discovered a box containing these precious manuscripts which they took to the then king of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh.

8216;8216;The importance of these manuscripts is justified by the fact that the Gilgit manuscripts are perhaps the only corpus of Buddhist manuscripts discovered in India,8217;8217; says Khurshid Qadri, director of the Jammu and Kashmir Archives Department.

A similar script called Sangathatasutra is what Koul discovered. While the major portions of these manuscripts are in the National Archives of India in New Delhi around 3,366 pages the Jammu and Kashmir Museum has around 670 pages. Fragments of the manuscripts are also said to be in the possession of the British Museum, and the Department of Archaeology in Karachi.

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Though till 1961 the entire volume was in Srinagar, the first portion was shifted to New Delhi during the Indo-Pak conflict on the special instructions of the then Prime Minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

The manuscripts were written on birch bark in old Sanskrit in the Sharada script. 8216;8216;This is also called the Gilgit script of the round variety,8217;8217; says Qadri.In both New Delhi and Srinagar, the precious leaves have been given a preliminary conservation treatment and have been laminated.

8216;8216;The national archives laminated their part before ours. Ours was a more difficult task as some of it was in fragments,8217;8217; says Qadri. The Gilgit manuscripts cover a wide range of themes such as iconometry, folk tales, philosophy, medicine and several related areas of life and knowledge. 8216;8216;It is actually a dialogue between Buddha and two Bodhi Satvas and talks about religion in a very simple language without the slightest of philosophy,8217;8217; adds Qadri.