When Francis Napier wanted to write a biography of his famous ancestor, John Napier, 8th Laird of Merchistoun, who invented Logarithms, he wanted to include information about the knowledge of Mathematics and Astronomy of the ancient Hindus. Francis wanted to enlist the help of Colonel Colin Mackenzie, because of the latter’s mathematical knowledge. Although Francis died before he could write the biography, Mackenzie still retained his interest in Oriental research. Therefore, in 1782, Mackenzie came to Madras.
How the Mackenzie manuscript collection came about was described by Francis’ maternal grandson, Sir Alexander Johnston, to the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, in 1832. Johnston’s mother was Francis Napier’s daughter, and she lived in Madurai, when Mackenzie arrived in Madras. She was herself a manuscript collector. She invited Mackenzie to Madurai in 1783, and introduced him to the brahmins there. With their help, for the next 38 years, Mackenzie collected manuscripts from all over the peninsula, spending £15,000 of his own money in the process. Mackenzie wanted to catalogue his collection, but died before he could do so. But in 1817, he had written a letter to Alexander Johnston detailing his collection. Partly from this letter, and partly from a list which Mackenzie’s scholar friends had prepared, Wilson, a Sanskrit professor at Oxford University, prepared a catalogue.
Speaking to the Select Committee, Johnston suggested that the British Parliament complete the Mackenzie collection, with instructions to the Governor General of India and the Governors of Bombay and Madras to help in the task.
The motives behind such efforts sometimes appear patronising. Johnston, for example, said manuscripts would give the British an idea about Indian society, and enable them to take steps to “raise the moral and political character of the natives.” But the result was fortuitous. It was the assiduous efforts of the British that resulted in valuable manuscript collections. The East India Company bought the Mackenzie Collection from his widow for £10,000.
Manuscript collections in Madras, including those of Mackenzie, Dr. Leyden and C.P. Brown, had a peripatetic existence for a long time, being moved from the Madras Literary Society to the Museum Theatre in Egmore to a godown in Nungambakkam, to the Presidency College and finally to the Oriental Manuscript Library. The library published descriptive catalogues of its collections, and its Triennial catalogues included author index, subject index and a general index.
But Madras was the epicentre of a more unique project, which was inspired by German Indologist, Theodor Aufrecht. Between 1891 and 1903, Aufrecht published in Leipzig, Germany, an alphabetical catalogue of all Sanskrit manuscripts known at the time, in a work called ‘Catalogus Catalogorum,’ a catalogue of catalogues.
The Madras University began working on a project called the New Catalogus Catalogorum (NCC) in 1935, with Professor S. Kuppuswami Sastri as editor-in-chief, and Professor P. P. Subrahmanya Sastri and Dr. C. Kunhan Raja as members of the board. Dr. V. Raghavan, together with an assistant, was appointed to prepare the NCC. The scheme of abbreviations, the style of citing references - all followed the plan of Aufrecht. Citations from printed manuscripts and data on textual criticism were also included.
From 1942, Dr. Raghavan did the work single-handedly. He looked at the available material from every possible angle -- authors who were connected by family ties or teacher–pupil relationship; works that belonged to the same genre and so on. So the material under every alphabetical entry was huge. Publication was delayed because of the outbreak of the Second World War. The first edition came out in 1949, and a revised edition in1968.
Work on the NCC has been continuing in the Sanskrit Department, University of Madras, and they have got as far as the letter ‘Sa.’
“The work so far has taken up 40 volumes. We should be done in another three volumes. This project is one of a kind, because nowhere else do you have a catalogue that gives all details about every Sanskrit catalogue collection in the world. The NCC also includes details about Pali and Prakrit manuscripts,” says Dr. S. Padmanabhan, Head, the Sanskrit Department. The National Mission for Manuscripts funded the project from 2000 to 2014.
All European libraries have descriptive catalogues. But not all manuscript collections in India have descriptive catalogues. So, as and when descriptive catalogues become available for a collection, the information will have to be included in the revised editions of the NCC. Dr. Padmanabhan and his team feel it is best to put all the information online, so that scholars can access the information, and also because updates then become easier.
“We receive requests for information about manuscripts from Western scholars, who are mostly interested in manuscripts relating to Mathematics and Astronomy,” says Dr. Padmanabhan. He shows me a letter from Hartmut Buescher, Research Librarian, Royal Library of Denmark. Buescher says he is willing to write to anyone who can help fund NCC, emphasising its importance and stressing the need to take it to its conclusion. Current estimates of the cost, not only for completion of the NCC, but also digitising the contents, run to seven crores with the possibility of cost overruns. The department hopes the Central Government will fund the project. Dr. Padmanabhan also appeals to corporates to come forward to provide financial and technical help.
Did you know…
That manuscripts are often lost because people are unaware of their value? Dr. Padmanabhan mentions the case of a gentleman who discovered two sacks full of manuscripts in his ancestral house. Not knowing what to do with them, he threw them into the Tamraparani!
That not all Sanskrit scholars can decipher manuscripts, because the Grantha script can’t be easily read? The department used to run a course on Manuscriptology, which was later discontinued. Maybe some corporate can step in to help revive the course.
That many of the posts in the Sanskrit department remain vacant?
Team spirit
There is a team that is working on the NCC project. It includes Dr. Padmanabhan, editor-in-chief; Dr. N. Sowrirajan, associate editor- a grammarian and Vedic scholar, who can read Grantha, Telugu and Kannada scripts; Dr. Narasimhan, Associate Professor, Sanskrit department, University of Madras; Dr. Kumaraswamy, retired head of the Sanskrit department, Vaishnava College; Dr. Saraswathi, who used to teach Sanskrit in Montreal; C.R. Sathya, who holds a Masters degree in Information Technology and M.A. in Sanskrit, Dr. Durga Parameswari; R. Vijaya, Guruprasad and Krishna Pavan, who all have MPhil degrees in Sanskrit; Sriram, an IT professional who gave up a lucrative job in Holland, to do his PhD in Sanskrit, and Gajalakshmi. Interestingly, Gajalakshmi, who has completed her Plus Two, joined the department as an attender. “We noticed her keen interest in learning Sanskrit. So Dr. Saraswathi began teaching her Sanskrit. Now Gajalakshmi checks catalogues and also types for us,” says Padmanabhan.
