English

‘Sthapan’ is a Trust that has been formed to contribute towards the objective of preserving Indian literary heritage. The individuals associated with the Trust believe that it is essential for Indian resurgence that the Indian literary heritage in its entirety be preserved, digitised, and made freely accessible to all. Although this is a colossal task, it is possible for a large number of individuals, contributing in small and decentralised ways, to accomplish it in a short time. Given the kind of resources and technology that the tech giants possess, the digitisation of millions of books can be accomplished more simply and efficiently by them. A large number of western books, and a smaller number of non-western books, have already been digitised by Google. But it would be a great mistake to leave the digitisation to the tech giants only, as this would result in these corporations having the ultimate control over our knowledge heritage. To foreclose the possibility of control of Indian literary heritage passing into the hands of tech giants it is essential that the task of digitisation and free dissemination be taken up by people themselves.

The great importance of the literary heritage of a people arises from the fact that it embodies, in addition to knowledge, the collective memory, culture, and identity of the people. It is inconceivable for a civilization to continue to exist if the books, embodying the articulations of its constitutive elements, cease to exist. Historically, the greatest threats to books have come from invaders, conquerors, and religious and ideological fanatics.1 Throughout the ages, burning of libraries brought humiliation to the defeated and paved way for their long-term subjugation. Although in contemporary times burning of libraries is universally regarded as utterly barbaric, it has not prevented deliberate destruction of libraries even in the twenty-first century.2 The reasons for continuance of barbarism of libricide remain essentially the same as they were in the ages past: humiliation of the defeated and destruction of the basis of their culture and civilization.

For the non-western countries, apart from the problems of loss of historical records that were destroyed prior to decolonization by the colonizing countries for erasing the memory of the horrors committed during their rule,3 and loss of books and colonial-period records that were transferred to the colonizing countries, there is another source endangering whatever remains of their books and records in their own countries after the plunder done by colonizing countries. Long colonial rule in non-western countries, including India, has brought about a rupture with the past. As a consequence, most people in non-western countries are not conscious of the importance of preserving whatever remains of their historical and literary records. Educational systems, inherited from the colonial past and preserved almost intact in most countries, being Euro-centric, are resulting in a situation in which most people are unaware even of what remains of their literary heritage, not to speak of its importance.

For resurgence of India it is essential that the rupture that has taken place with history be repaired; and an essential element for such a repairing is the free and universal availability of the entire literary heritage of country for the people of India. To accomplish this massive task the following are required:

(i) Preservation, scanning, and digitisation of the extant manuscripts; and making the digitised copies of the manuscripts freely accessible to the people of India. The National Mission for Manuscripts, established in 2003 by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India, for unearthing and preserving the vast manuscript wealth of India, estimates the number of extant manuscripts to be ten million. Dominik Wujastyk’s estimate is much higher – 30 million manuscripts. Wujastyk notes that Pingree’s estimate was also the same.4 A partial list of the manuscripts is available in the New Catalogus Catalogorum published by the University Of Madras in 42 volumes.

Preservation of manuscripts is of the greatest importance. If there is a single copy of an important work, the failure to preserve the manuscript would result in the loss of the knowledge contained in the book forever. The case of the works of the great Sanskrit playwright Bhasa dramatically illustrates the point. Prior to 1909 not a single work by Bhasa was available. In 1909 and later, single copies of his thirteen plays were discovered. It is thanks to the preservation of those manuscripts that we now have available these great works of literature.

Because of the fragile nature of most manuscripts, it is important that the tasks of their preservation, scanning and digitisation be carried out only under the supervision and with the help of experts, preferably those of the The National Mission for Manuscripts.

(ii) Scanning and digitisation of all important books of all Indian languages that have been published and on which the copyrights have lapsed; and making the digitised copies freely accessible to all.

(iii) Initiation of a translation movement with the objective of translating all important works of Sanskrit and other classical languages into modern Indian languages so as to make them accessible to the people at large.

There is only a small fragment of the classical literature that is available in English. Availability in modern Indian languages is much worse. For instance it is estimated that there are 9,000 source-works of Indian Astronomy and Mathematics (which are preserved in around 30,000 manuscripts), only about 150 texts were edited, and just about 30 texts translated during 1800-1947. During the last seventy years, another 300 texts have been edited and 65 texts have been translated, many of them with detailed explanatory notes.’ (Srinivas (2019)).

For these objectives, at Sthapan, we will be working along these lines:

(i) For digitisation of a book the following steps are required:

(a) preparation of the text file of the book either by typing the contents of the book or by first scanning it and then making the scanned copy editable by using an OCR;

(b) proofreading of the text file;

(c) conversion of the corrected text file into suitable formats like pdf, epub etc. These three tasks can be accomplished by the same person or by different individuals.

At Sthapan, for making text files we will be mostly using the scanning-OCRing method, as it is less time-consuming. To begin with, we will be converting the text files only into pdf format, but we hope to make the digitised books available in other popular formats at a later stage. Each digitised book will mention the names of the volunteers responsible for performing the digitisation tasks.

(ii) The pdf files of the digitised texts will be uploaded on the Sthapan website. These files can be freely downloaded by everyone.

(iii) The books digitised by Sthapan can be uploaded on other websites. No permission is required for such uploadings. Neither an acknowledgement of the source is required (although acknowledgement will be appreciated). As a book becomes almost indestructible if there are a large number of copies of it, so we very much welcome uploading of books on our website by other websites storing books and making them freely available.

(iv) People associated with the Sthapan believe that the task of preservation of Indian literary heritage must not be contaminated by any commercial motives. Therefore, the Sthapan website will never have any advertisements or promote any commercial activity directly or indirectly.

(v) Although we will be proofreading texts before they are uploaded, some errors may still remain. We would be grateful to those readers who inform us of the errors so that they are corrected.

(vi) In the long-run one should aim for authoritative texts. In short run, however, mass availability of books is more important.

(vii) Wiki model has shown that massive tasks can be accomplished even if every individual contribution is very small, provided a large number of individuals participate in the task. Typing, scanning or proofreading of one book can be done by any individual in her/his free time. Any help from any quarter in the tasks of preparation of typescripts and their proofreading would be greatly welcomed by us.

References:

  • Al-Tikriti, Nabil, ‘Stuff Happens’: A Brief Overview of the 2003 Destruction of Iraqi Manuscript Collections, Archives and Libraries’, Library Trends, 2007, pp. 730–45.

  • Banton, Mandy, ”Destroy? Migrate? Conceal?’ British Strategies for the Disposal of Sensitive Records of Colonial Administrations at Independence’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40, 2012, pp. 321–35.

  • Hampshire, Edward, ‘Apply the Flame More Searingly’: The Destruction and Migration of the Archives of British Colonial Administration: A Southeast Asia Case Study’, Journal of Imperial and Contemporary History, 41, 2013, pp. 334–52.

  • Knuth, Rebecca, Libricide: The Regime-Sponsored Destruction of Books and Libraries in the Twentieth Century, Praeger, 2003.

  • Marcellinus, Ammianus, History, (ed.) John Carew Rolfe, 3 vols., Harvard University Press, 1986.

  • Ovenden, Richard, Burning the Books – A History of Knowledge under Attack, Harvard University Press, 2020.

  • Parpola, Simo, ‘Library of Assurbanipal’, in Roger S. Bagnall, et al. (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

  • Pingree, I. and J. M. Steele (Eds.), Pathways into the Study of Ancient Sciences – Selected Essays by David Pingree, The American Philosophical Society Press, 2014.

  • Polastron, Lucien X., Books on Fire – The Destruction of Libraries throughout History, translated by Jon E. Graham, Inner Traditions, 2004.

  • Raven, James (ed.), Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections Since Antiquity, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

  • Robertson, Donald, Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools, University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.

  • Srinivas, M.D., ‘The Untapped Wealth of Manuscripts on Indian Astronomy and Mathematics’, 2019.

  • Wujastyk, W. ‘Indian Manuscripts’, in J. B. Quenzer Ed. Manuscript Cultures Mapping the Field, De Gruyter, 2014, pp. 159-160.

Notes:

  1. Among the numerous cases of libricides the following were particularly destructive of knowledge. Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh was destroyed by the Babylonians and the Medes in 612 BCE. The destruction of the library at the Carthage happned at the orders of the Roman commander Scipio Aemilius at the time of sack of Carthage in 146 BCE. The great library at Alexandria was destroyed during the sack of the city by Caesar. The destruction is dated at 48 BCE. According to Ammianus Marcellinus ‘unanimous testimony of ancient records declares that 700,000 books, brought together by the unremitting energy of the Ptolemaic kings, were burned in the Alexandrine war, when the city was sacked under the dictator Caesar’. The second Alexandrian Library was destroyed by the bishop Theophilus in 391 CE. The library at Alexandria was again destroyed in 642 CE by the Arab military leader Amr on the orders of the Caliph Omar. According to one account the library scrolls were distributed to four thousand baths of Alexandria and were used as fuel to heat water for six months (Polstron (2004)).

    In the case of the literatures of original inhabitants of Americas, the destruction has been almost complete. The Aztec books, in their entirety, excepting at most a few codices, if any, were destroyed by the Spaniards in 1529. There are only three extant Aztec codices that are considered as being possibly pre-Hispanic. According to Robertson (1994), no pre-Conquest examples of Aztec codices have survived. Spaniards destroyed all Mayan books in the Yucatan in 1561; and Inca books in 1583.

    The great Indian library at Taxila was destroyed by the white Huns in the fifth century CE. Nalanda University was annihilated by Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1199. He was also responsible for the destruction of the Vikramashila University in 1203. A large part of Buddhist literature is found only in East Asian languages, and not in any classical Indian language. This indicates the magnitude of loss that occurred due to the annihilation of Nalanda University.

    The most important lesson that emerges from history is: lesser the number of copies of a book, lesser the chances of its long-term survival.

  2. Among the cases of genocide of books in modern times the following have been particularly destructive. The library of Louvain University (known then as the Université catholique de Louvain) was burnt down by the invading German army in 1914. The reconstructed library was again put to fire by the Germans in 1940. During the Nazi regime the Jewish books bore the brunt of destruction. It has been estimated that over 100 million books were destroyed during the Holocaust, in the twelve years from the period of Nazi dominance in Germany in 1933 up to the end of the Second World War (Ovenden (2020)). Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1949 brought about great destruction of Tibetan literary heritage. About six thousand monasteries were eliminated, most of which housed a library. These libraries were destroyed on the spot (Polstron (2004)). During the cultural revolution massive destruction of books took place in China itself. The National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina that housed over 1.5 million books, manuscripts, maps, photographs and other records was deliberately destroyed by the Serbian forces in 1992. 2003 U.S. war in Iraq, through fire and pillage, destroyed almost all Iraqi libraries. The loss included thousands of clay books, including the ancient Library of Sippar. The literary heritage of Mali would have been destroyed in the aftermath of jihadi takeover of Mali in 2012, but for the preemptive and farsighted actions on the part of a small number of individuals.

  3. As in the case of British and French colonial regimes, South African apartheid regime destroyed documents on a massive scale. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in their final report said: ‘The story of apartheid is, amongst other things, the story of the systematic elimination of thousands of voices that should have been part of the nation’s memory.’

  4. ‘The figure of 30 million Indian manuscripts is also mentioned by Sheldon Pollock who contrasts it with the total of about 30,000 Greek manuscripts (covering the classical, Hellenistic and Byzantine periods) which are extant (S. Pollock, The Language of Gods in the World of Men, University of California Press, Berkeley 2006, p. 558 & fn)’. (Srinivas (2019)).