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The Digital Word

Posted

online: Sunday, January 28, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST

Bangalore

The next time you want a rare manuscript, you might just find it in a digital

archive, preserved for all time beyond damage. And, all thanks to an

initiative that not only preserves manuscripts but tours the country in

search of these.

When

the Mahabharata Samshodhana Pratishthanam or the Mahabharata Research

Foundation began its project in November 2005, with the blessings of

President APJ Abdul Kalam, it did not envisage such a huge coverage area. The

non-profit Indic research organisation based in Bangalore has been involved in digitising

ancient Indian manuscripts since 1997. Run by a group of technology

professionals working in various MNCs, the foundation works closely with the

National Mission for Manuscripts (NAMAMI) and is recognised by the Government

of India under the Ministry of Culture. Now, the outfit will send a van

carrying digitising equipment across the country, to collect rare

manuscripts, digitise them on the spot and transfer them onto a digital

library.

The

project will roll out in Mysore

for starters. “As of now, we’ve been able to tap barely 0.1 per

cent of the total number of manuscripts in the country so we want to go to

far-flung areas of the country, collect manuscripts and digitise them,”

says Ramachandra Budihal, founder trustee of the foundation. “We want

to bring forth the precious heritage and ancient knowledge of India to our people,” says Budihal, a

senior software solutions architect with Wipro in Bangalore.

“All

this while, we’ve heavily invested in research and development in

manuscript digitisation. We have access to technology but not to manuscripts.

Hence, the mobile van which takes us to people instead of them coming to us.

Several temples, maths and gurdwaras hold ancient manuscripts. We want to

visit these places.”

Equipped

with the latest scan station and cabin control software, the van will also

carry a state-of-the-art security system comprising biometrics. “Since

we will be travelling to different cities and villages, we have to make sure

that the treasure that we are tapping and saving in our van remains safe.

Hence, a remote controlled van that I can have access to even by sitting in Bangalore,” says

Budihal.

After

digitisation, the manuscripts will be transferred to Bangalore via satellite; a V-SAT given by ISRO

sits on the roof of the van. They will then go into NAMAMI’s National

Digital Manuscripts Library. “We will be having base stations in Bangalore, Delhi

and Chennai that will receive these satellite images and do the back-end

processing that involved touching up and packaging of the images of digitised

manuscripts. While the entire equipment costs almost Rs 75 lakh, the software

fixed in the van for digitising the manuscripts costs a whopping Rs 1 crore.

“We haven’t yet got the bandwidth, which will cost a good Rs 18

lakh per month,” says Budihal.

A test

run is on the cards in Bangalore

a month from now. The van will carry a team of five to six people, including

two language scholars and a manuscript conservator who will be responsible

for chemically treating the ancient manuscripts. “We will approach

people and ask them to lend us their manuscripts for digitisation, after

which they will be returned. In case of big libraries that store several

manuscripts, we would camping in that place for a few months, install a

temporary nodal centre there for transferring the digital data via satellite

and then move on to our next destination. After we digitise manuscripts, we

will hold training sessions for people on preservation of the manuscripts

that they possess or look after,” he says.

Future

plans include visiting neighbouring countries like Pakistan,

Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar to digitise Indian

manuscripts in these countries. “We also want to tap several Indian

medicinal manuscripts in Indonesia

and Cambodia.

These are treasure troves of invaluable knowledge. This will take some time,

but we hope to cover all the manuscripts in India in the next four to five

years,” says Budihal.