South indian incised mss

[mhcrxlc at dir.mcc.ac.uk]

Dominik Wujastyk writes:

>It has been my experience that all these libraries don't think twice about
>applying lamp-black to make incised MSS legible.  To them it is a simple matter
>of making the MS readable.  I have a great deal of sympathy with this point of
>view.

This has been my experience too.

>But this is an issue which exercises Western librarians and
>conservationists, since it introduces a change in the MS that is probably
>irreversible (the reversibility of any change made to an object being conserved
>is a canonical rule of contemporary conservation practice).

Has anybody looked into the question of the long-term effects of _not_
continuing traditional practices ?

Lance Cousins

MANCHESTER, UK
Email: mhcrxlc at dir.mcc.ac.uk