Classical heritages

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Further to Richard's comments, I heard David Pingree say in conversation 
that there might be 30 million Sanskrit manuscripts in the world today, if 
one took into account all the MSS in private collections.  Unfortunately, 
I never asked him how he got that figure (did anyone else hear this 
estimate from him?).  The National Mission for Manuscripts 
(http://www.namami.org/) works with a figure of seven million, if I 
remember correctly.  NAMAMI has conducted surveys, the results of which 
are here:

   http://www.namami.org/nationalsurvey.htm

I find the results raise questions for me: the numbers of MSS seem rather 
low.  Maybe they are only looking at non-library repositories?  There are 
other questions: In 2004-5, in Bihar, Orissa and UP, 650,000 manuscripts 
were documented in about 35,000 repositories.  That means each repository 
had 18.6 MSS.  Nobody has that few MSS.  If you walk into almost any 
brahman home, there's an almira somewhere that's packed with MSS.  I would 
estimate 100-500 MSS is typical of a domestic collection, with numbers 
easily rising to a couple of thousand.  For example, during a visit to the 
Alwar branch of the RORI a few years ago, I took some notes about donated 
MS acquisitions added subsequent to the Maharaja's palace collection:

Donor 			Number of MSS

Pt Poorna Malji			200
Pt Laxmi Kantji			200
Pt Ram Dattaji			335
Sarvashir Pt Pitamer Das	60
Nandan Lalji Misra		42
Ramesh Chandraji Bhargava	144
Thakur Chiddu Singh		59
Shankar Lalji			104
Pyare Lalji Sharma		5
Amarnathji Sarasvat		166
Pt Shiv Dattaji			500

The Peterson catalogue lists 2478 MSS in 1892; by 1985 there were 6711 
MSS, of which 1687 were by donation by the above-listed gentlemen.

Again, there are lots of open questions here.  What is the demographic of 
pandits or families willing to donate their MSS to RORI?  What are the 
social pressures to do so, or not to do so?  Is it meritorious?  Is it 
more meritorious to throw MSS into a river (as documented by Prof. KT 
Pandurangi in his 1978 booklet "The Wealth of Sanskrit Manuscripts in 
India and Abroad" (http://books.google.nl/books?id=ahZ2AAAAIAAJ).  Are 
there large, undonated collections?

One valuable policy of the RORI branches is that they put the name of the 
donor pandit on a large label on top of the almira with his MSS. A sense 
of identity, continuity and family pride is preserved in this way.  It 
might seem a small thing, but it's important.

Final point for now: rough calculations based on collection-wide 
statistics for MS corpora such as those documented in VOHD show that MSS 
having dated colophons number about 15% of a typical collection, and that

 	THE MEDIAN DATE FOR SURVIVING SANSKRIT MSS IS 1830

I've shouted that statement because it is so extraordinary.  It is 
explicable as the result of two historical facts.  First, the destruction 
of MSS preceding this date.  (Pingree, again, said that a paper Sanskrit 
MS physically lasted about 200 years.)  Second, the advent of widespread 
printing in the second half of the nineteenth century, leading to the 
demise of the scribal profession.

If Pingree's 200 year figure is roughly right, the majority of surviving 
paper Skt MSS have about 20 years left before disappearing just from old 
age.


Best,
-- 
Dr Dominik Wujastyk