Around 2,200 precious and old Marathi hand written manuscripts from 14th to 19th century will be available on the World Wide Web. The manuscripts will contain writings of different saints, purana granthas, biographies and translations from Sanskrit to Marathi by famous or well known writers like Mukteshwar and Vaman Pandit.
Former librarian V. L. Manjul of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute collects these manuscripts and it took almost six years for him to make this collection. It also includes 100 copies of ‘Dnyaneshwari’.
This collection is the property of various institutes such as Pune Marathi Granthalaya, Deccan College, BORI etc. It also happens to have come from various parts of Pune, Kolhapur, Satara, Karad and Mumbai. According to Manjul, there are 250 manuscripts in the collection, which are under the control of Marathi Manuscript Center. Manjul himself established the organization to save these rare documents.
People may see this collection on the web, which is created by the South Asian Studies Center of the Deccan College. This online collection will help people from various places in the world who wish to study Marathi manuscripts. These manuscripts will be completely uploaded on the web within a couple of months.
Some people including Sadanand More, R. C. Dhere, Anne Feldhause and Eleanor Zelliot helped Manjul in the collection process. They also encouraged him to start the Marathi Manuscripts Center.
1 response so far
1 Gatha Mandir Dehu ~ Aug 13, 2009 at 4:17 am
That’s really a great project. 6 years work! Do they get help from volunteer or is it a private project?
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