Fate of NCC

[Vielle Christophe]

KSA Arjunwadkar wrote
27-9-1999
 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

An one-line NCC could be an idea. All the participants to that new possible
project would scan the pages of a certain amount of printed catalogues
(descriptive or not, rare or common) and (unique) hand-lists, and send them
to "the" volunteer responsable of the centralisation and the organisation
of the digitalized material, which could be so  available to all from a big
server. Search-tools should be then conceived to navigate within that
marvellous data-base. Of course it is a dream.
A first important thing should be the making of an updated Catalogus
Catalogorum sticto sensu, i.e. a sequel to Janert's annotated bibliography
(it seems that the project of his 2nd volume has been abandonned according
to what Harrassowitz wrote to me).
The NCC in its actual form could also be quickly concluded through the
publication of its unedited material, that is, I suppose, a lot of a paper
slips,  by the simple photography of them, without "typographic" and real
"editorial" work except the respect of their alphabetical order. The
several volumes resulting from that could be very useful for all.
Anyway, the NCC is an indispensable tool, even if, from my little
experience with it, its references have always to be checked again, and
about 20% of the available and already catalogued Mss. material are not
listed therein.

Dr. Christophe Vielle
Centre d'Études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud
Institut orientaliste
Place Blaise Pascal 1
B - 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium)
Tel. 32+10+47 49 54