Culture ministry to prepare separate SOPs for preservation of manuscripts

THE Culture Ministry has set itself a mammoth task of locating, preserving, and decoding India's vast manuscript wealth, scattered across states and written on everything from palm leaves and birch bark to copper plates and cloth.

- PARVEZ SULTAN @ New Delhi

At the Gyan Bharatam international conference held recently, PM Narendra Modi put the number of manuscripts at a staggering one crore in multiple languages, including Sanskrit, Tamil, Persian and Malayalam. The ministry is drawing up separate standard operating procedures (SoPs) to preserve ancient text recorded on a wide variety of materials.