Manuscript sales

[r.l.schmidt at easteur-orient.uio.no]

>I am not sure if this is an appropriate thing to introduce in this forum but 
>I think that it is important.
>A manuscript dealer here in London is about to produce an illustrated 
>catalogue of 175 manuscripts they have to sell in Sanskrit, Tibetan, Hindi 
>and other languages. I have seen quite a few of them and some are very 
>interesting. For instance: Gupta fragments of Buddhist canonnical works, an 
>illustrated life of Mirabai, a large and unusual janamasaki collection from 
>Amritsar of c. 1800, a fine ms of Banarasidasa's works copied in Agra by a 
>third generation disciple of Banarasidasa, etc.etc.
>On the one hand if anyone were interested in buying any of them I could pass 
>your name on to the dealers.
>On the other hand there is the issue of whether anyone should buy them or 
>not. In a way the sale of manuscripts is not a thing to be encouraged as it 
>may cause further 'exports' from South Asia and elsewhere.
>On yet another hand if they are here, then it is a pity if they go into 
>private collectors hands rather than into libraries where they can be 
>generally accessible.
>I find myself unable to decide what is the morally correct attitude to this 
>issue.
>Peter Friedlander

Personally I am not interested in buying manuscripts.  But I am concerned
that if museums, libraries or scholars do not buy them as *entire*
manuscripts, they may be resold to "art dealers" which then sell them a
page or two at a time, often framed, as "art" or "calligraphy".  The
dealers themselves may not be in a position to assess the importance of the
manuscripts as written documents. Manuscripts sold in such a way are
scattered to the four winds, and can never again be re-assembled for
scholarly examination.

The indology net certainly seems to be an appropriate forum for discussion
of this issue.

Ruth Schmidt
Dept of East European and Oriental Studies 
University of Oslo
P.O. Box 1030 Blindern
N-0315 Oslo, Norway
Phone: (47) 22 85 55 86
Fax: (47) 22 85 41 40
Email: r.l.schmidt at easteur-orient.uio.no