number of Sanskrit mss. and number of texts

[James Hartzell]

Perhaps someone might be able to add updated stats from the National
Mission for Manuscripts efforts?  Their survey page (
http://www.namami.org/nationalsurvey.htm) says:

*The Survey So Far **… *

The Mission began the National Survey in *2004- 05* as a Pilot Project in 3
states—*Orissa,*

 *Bihar* and *Uttar Pradesh* . A total of 53 districts were covered— 30 in
Orissa, 13 in Uttar
Pradesh and 10 in Bihar. In the Pilot Project itself, the Mission unearthed
6, 50, 000
manuscripts and about 35,000 repositories.

  Drawing upon the experience of the Pilot project, the next round of
Survey in *2005-2006 *

was held in *Delhi, Manipur, Karnataka* and *Assam* . In Delhi, about
85,000 manuscripts
were found. The Survey in Manipur was extremely successful despite several
pockets being
 inaccessible and about 10,000 manuscripts were located. Likewise, in
Assam, about 42,000
manuscripts were discovered. Around 1,50,000 manuscripts were found in
Karnataka. In
*Gujarat*, the survey was initiated by the coordination of the Lalbhai
Dalapatbhai Institute of
Indology, Ahmedabad.

   In *2006-07*, the National Survey took place in *Himachal Pradesh,
Haryana *and* Tamil Nadu*.

 The Manuscript Resource Centre in Himachal Pradesh, Himachal Academy of
Arts, Languages

and Culture acted as the coordinating body in the State. The National
Survey was successful

in locating approximately 20, 000 manuscripts across the State, with local
scripts like

Takri coming to the focus. The Survey also saw the school students getting
involved in

 the awareness campaigns to promote the documentation and conservation of
manuscripts.

 The Manuscript Resource Centre, Dept. of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit,
Kurukshetra University

was also active in organizing the Survey in the State of Haryana. The
Survey has been

successful in locating approximately 500 manuscripts. In *Rajasthan*, the
Survey was initiated

 by the coordination of the Rajasthan State Archives. Out of total 33
Districts *19 Districts*

are already surveyed and an amount of 7, 50,001 Manuscripts are identified.


   [image: 1]
  In *2007-08*, the Mission conducted National Survey of Manuscripts in all
*18 *Districts of

*Chhattisgarh* and in all *16 *Districts* *of *Arunachal Pradesh. *In
Chhattishgarh, the Survey was

conducted by the coordination of the Directorates of Archives and Museums,
Chhattisgarh and

 in Arunachal Pradesh, it was conducted by the Coordination of* *Dept. of
Cultural Affairs,

Directorate of Research, (Culture, History, Archeology, Museum, Archives &
Philosophy),
Itanagar*.*

  [image: 1]
 In the financial year *2007-08* survey was initiated in the State of *Madhya
Pradesh* by the

coordination of the Directorates of Archives and Museums, Bhopal; in *Goa *by
the Directorate

 of Archives & Archeology, (Govt. of Goa), Panaji and in the State of *Jammu
& Kashmir* by    the Central Institute of Buddhist Studies, Leh.

  [image: 1]
 In *April 2012*, the Mission has completed the Survey work (which was
initiated in the year 2007)
in all *13* Districts of *Uttarakhand* by the coordination of the
Uttaranchal Sanskrit Academy,
Haridwar and started processing for the survey of *Sikkim* and *Mizoram*


On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 9:20 AM, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at gmail.com>wrote:

> As far as I know, nobody has counted how many Indian MSS have been
> catalogued.  However, it should be possible to do some kind of back-of-an-envelope
> calculation for this, as follows.
>
> There's a publication by Madras University called the *New Catalogus
> Catalogorum *(NCC)*.  *Its current editor is the energetic Professor
> Siniruddha Dash <dash_sans at yahoo.co.uk>.  The NCC is a digest of all
> published MS catalogues.  Well, not all, but most.  At least, up to the
> late 70s, and some later ones.  So, in NCC you can look up an author or
> the title of a Sanskrit or Prakrit work, and you'll get a list of the
> known MSS of that work, culled from the published manuscript catalogues.
>
> The NCC isn't finished.  Only nineteen volumes have been published,
> bringing it up to the end of ma (म), 37th letter of the alphabet.  There
> are 8 more letters of the alphabet to go, so NCC is about 37/45x100=82%
> done.   Each volume is about 350 pages.  Each page has about 50 MSS
> mentioned (this is *very* rough! - per-page counts vary wildly).  So each
> volume mentions 17,500 catalogued MSS, and there are 19 vols, so that comes
> out at 332,500 MSS mentioned so far.  And that's 82%.  So the total would
> be 405,487.  Say half a million.
>
> There are *lots* of rough edges to this figure.  It's very, very crude.
> But it does give one at least something to hold on to.  Half a million
> catalogued manuscripts out of a minimum total of 7,000,000.  That's 7%.
>
> But if the Koba people have put their MSS into a database - which they're
> doing at quite a rate, that could quite soon add 250,000 MSS to the total
> catalogued.  And there are other projects like that (though none so big, or
> well-funded).   So the total catalogued could be higher.  Say it's double.
> A million.  That's 14% of the seven-million figure.  But the seven-million
> figure is probably very conservative.  So we're still hovering in the
> 5%-15% range, I'd say.
>
> Improvements to the above argument and result are welcomed!
>
> Best,
> Dominik Wujastyk
>



-- 
James Hartzell, PhD
Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC)
The University of Trento, Italy


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