VVRI Hoshiarpur (fwd)

[Claude Setzer]

This is the library i have told you about before that I think has a LOT of
sanskirt texts in Telegu script. what do yo thin about offerign to be
involved in this. Perhap we cold offer them the manual OCR in exchange for
soem of the texts, etc.

Big questions:
1) Is Tamil ready for ocr?? (it uses free internet font does it not??
2) can we realistically predict that Telegu ocr will be ready this
(december) month??
3) can we realistically predict transliteration to work well, at least
one-way between these scripts??? (We might ask them to specifically tell us
the correct transliterations from Devanagari and Telegu to Tamil, etc.)

Claude

> From: Jeevan Deol <jeevandeol at hotmail.com>
>
> Subject: vvri hoshiarpur
>
> tribune, 28 november 2000:
>
> Hi-tech project to save old manuscripts
> By Chitleen K Sethi
> Tribune News Service
>
> CHANDIGARH, Nov 26
>
> DAV College, Sector 10, Chandigarh, housing the historical Lal Chand Shodh
> Pustakalaya founded in Lahore, is working on a war footing to conserve a
> valuable collection of more than 8000 manuscripts and 9000 rare books into
> something more lasting and easily transferable than paper.
>
> Not many researchers in the field of history or literature would know that
> the DAV College is home to some of the oldest manuscripts and rarest text
> books of vedic literature in their original form. Some of these have been
> written on palm leaf, others on paper and some others on birch bark.
>
> The story behind the library's shift from Lahore to India is as intriguing
> as the collection. The DAV Management Committee had in 1917, founded the
> Raibahadur Lal Chand Research Library to encourage research in Indology.
> During partition the manuscripts and the books were secretly brought by
DAV
> workers in trucks, buses, military vans to India and later the whole
> collection was compiled in Sadhu Ashram Hoshiarpur and became a part of
the
> Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute. In 1996, this collection was
> shifted to Chandigarh.
>
> The manuscripts include copies of the Vedas, Samhitas, Brahamanas,
> Upnishads, Dharamsutras, Puranas, Upuranas, Ayurveda and Smritis alongwith
> the rare books on subjects as varied as art, architecture, astronomy,
> astrology, mathematics, economics, ethics, lexicons, polity etc. The
> college is now cataloguing the complete collection of books and
> manuscripts and will be printing the catalogue for reference.
>
> Also, the library is busy converting this ocean of rare knowledge into
> more accessible and retrievable form of CDs. Every leaf of the manuscript
> is scanned and transferred onto the computer where it is cleaned off
> marks, numbered and then printed if required or transferred into CDs for
> reference.  Photostat copies of many of these rare manuscripts are also
> being made available by the research centre to all those who are involved
> in research of this variety. In fact the library gets most of its research
> scholars from abroad who are impressed with the state of these documents.
>
> With the manuscripts and books in thousands, the college has already spent
> almost 28 lakh rupees on this monumental work of conservation of this
> valuable collection. The college has also written to the Government of
> India to help them in their effort but no positive response has been
> received by the college authorities. Says Dr KK Dhawan, honorary director
> of this library, the Government wrote back asking if the DAV college was a
> registered body or not. We here at the library need more funds than what
> we can afford here at the level of the college and it will be a great
> service to the nation if some effort is shared in the preservation of its
> rich heritage.
>
> ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
>