Digital cameras and Sanskrit MSS

[Gene Thursby]

	An appreciation (and very slight commentary) on the very humanizing 
insights of Dominik Wujastyk that began:
> Many years ago in a small MSS library in Nadiad, I was refused
> permission to photograph a MS.  I asked whether I could nevertheless
> copy it out by hand.  That was no problem.  So I sat down and spent a
> couple of days writing the thing out.  Everyone was very kind and
> friendly, and at tea breaks etc., we got to know each other a bit.  An
> old fellow who could speak a little Sanskrit was brought in, so that was
> nice too.
	The few times I've got in deep trouble in India were when I
brought it with me in the shape of equipment and an unworkable attitude of
urgency and a misplaced sense of importance.  At the Aj Press in Varanasi
in the late 1960s, I wanted to film articles from the 1920s published in
that prestigious daily newspaper.  There was no problem with reading and
copying out selections, and I thought that the editorial staff had given
permission for use of my copy stand and camera for microfilming as well. 
As it happened, I was hasty, had not secured permission from all members
of the staff, and had come into the office during a simmering
generational dispute.  My push to "be efficient" and to "document
everything" brought the dispute to the surface, disrupted the atmosphere
at the Press for several days, brought charges that I must be a spy
because an ordinary person could not afford such expensive equipment, and
required many cups of tea and belatedly sensitive listening to people who
were at the Aj long before I arrived on the scene.  It remains a painful
recollection and a hard way (not only for me) to learn that respectful
conversation, tea, and patient cooperation with people -- who are in many
ways senior colleagues -- at a local site are the greater part of a
research expedition.  What one quite evidently takes away when departing 
is at most only a quarter of the whole encounter. Gene Thursby
<gthursby at religion.ufledu>