New Delhi, June 23: A campaign is under way to save the Northeast’s hoary past for the future. The National Mission for Manuscripts has launched a comprehensive search for priceless manuscripts containing little-known nuggets from the region’s history. These documents will be preserved for posterity in a scientific manner and made available to researchers.
Set up last year under the Union culture ministry, the mission intends to first preserve and then catalogue valuable historical documents that could be lying in temples, libraries and museums.
The importance of the project stems from the fact that most people across the country are ignorant about the Northeast’s history. Another factor is the region’s excessively humid weather, which, experts say, hastens the process of decay.
Mission director Sudha Gopalakrishnan said a team would soon visit the river isle of Majuli, which is the storehouse of recorded information on 15th century saint Srimanta Sankardev and his Vaishnavite philosophy.
In the olden days, manuscripts were written on birch bark, handmade paper, parchment, palm leaf and sometimes on metal. All of these are perishable materials and require scientific treatment for long-term preservation.
The myriad tribes of the Northeast picked up the art of recording information later than communities elsewhere in the country, which is why manuscripts pertaining to the region are rare. The mission plans to retrieve four lakh manuscripts from across the country during the year, which is higher than last year’s target of 2 lakh.
Nearly 20,000 manuscripts from Assam and Manipur are already in safe custody, but historians believe there are many more waiting to be found and preserved.