Stunning Jain manuscripts from the 13th century go online
Works in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Gujarati and Rajasthani have been digitised by the British Library.
The Jain manuscripts currently in the British
Library collections have a long history and were formerly held by two distinct
institutions, the British Museum and the India Office Library.
Built over a period of more than
two-and-a-half centuries, from the earliest acquisitions of 1753 (in the
British Museum’s Sloane and Harley collections), to the latest in 2005, the
collection includes works in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Gujarati and Rajasthani
and in view of its size (over 1,000 items), range of material and state of
preservation, it is one of the most important outside India.
Most
of the Jain manuscripts originally belonged in several individual collections
acquired in India during the 19th century by Indologists and employees in the
service of the East India Company (among them HT Colebrooke, G Bühler, W.
Erskine, H. Jacobi, C Mackenzie, AC Burnell). The subject areas and literary
traditions represented are numerous and diverse: canonical, ethics,
ritualistic, narrative, astronomy, astrology, mathematics and music. Thirty
three Jain manuscripts are now available online in Digitised Manuscripts.
The
selection includes rare and valuable palm leaf manuscripts such as Or 1385B,
the oldest Jain manuscript in the British Library dated 1201 CE, several Kalpasutra versions, some
of them illuminated (i.e. Or 11921,
Or 14262
and Or 13959),
and a 15th century manuscript of the Sripala-katha
(Or 2126A)
and IO San
3177, which contains the manuscript used by Hermann Jacobi for his
edition, translation and glossary of the Kalakacarya-Kathanakam
of 1880 (at that time the only known written version of the legend). Finely
illustrated, it is also an amazing example of Jain calligraphy.
Beside poetical compositions like the Adityavara-katha (Or 14290),
there are cosmological treatises such as Sricandra’s Samgrahaniratna (Or 2116C)
and three Adhai-dvipa
(‘Two and a half continents’), illuminated diagrams representing the world
inhabited by human beings according to Jain cosmology
(Add Or 1812,
Add Or 1814
and Or 13937).
More digitised Jain manuscripts from the
British Library and other collections in the UK are available at Jainpedia: the Jain universe online.
Source | http://scroll.in/
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
Upcoming Event | National Conference on Future
Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) during April 22-23, 2016.
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