Fate of NCC

[K S Arjunwadkar]

27-9-1999

I was sorry to read the present plight of the New Catalogus
Catalogorum being published from Madras, India. I know how Dr V
Raghavan was consolidating all the resources and contacts at his
command to make the project viable, since 1956, when as a young
scholar of Sanskrit I had an opportunity to work under him in the
Sanskrit Commission appointed by the Govt of India. The report of
this Commission discusses, among other things, the importance of
preserving Mss material in India and the publication of catalogues
thereof. This mission is being pursued in another direction by Dr
Kapila Vatsyayan of Delhi who, as the head of the Indira Gandhi
Institute for the Arts, has sponsored the microfilming of a large
number of select Mss all over India. Dr Ashok Aklujkar of UBC,
Canada has valuable information on Mss collections all over India
which he collected during his sustained search of this material for
many years, maybe for his personal studies. I know the difficulties
in organising publication of catalogues of Mss as I am, as a trustee
of the Anandashram Samstha, Pune (India), trying to bring out a
one-line catalogue (for Descriptive Catalogues take many years to
prepare and are never complete) of Sanskrit Mss of the thousands
preserved in the Institute. The two basic problems of such projects
are finance and Sanskrit expertise heading towards extinction.

Dominik's posting on this subject raises the question whether it is
not high time the international community of scholars interested in
this line of learning makes a joint effort to save projects like NCC
from being given up midstream. I also see that the huge project of
A Dictionary of Sanskrit on Historical Principles sponsored by the
Deccan College, Pune is facing a similar fate despite the
foundational work of collecting references from Sanskrit works to
the tune of a crore (ten million).

One direction of organising such efforts is to set up a body to work
as a link between such projects and UNESCO which has schemes
to support enerprises of cultural importance all over the world.
Another line would be to create a public trust on the support of
private individuals and institutes working in this area. The
economics of such trusts founded in the West is that one British
pound fetches about 70 Rupees in India, and one American dollar
over 40 Rupees. In other words, what is a trifle to a person in the
west spells a fortune for one in India.

I should be happy to have a feedback on this subject from
members of Indology list.

KSA <arjunwadkar at mcmail.com>