Hyderabad, January 29: The state government has plans to digitalise the scripts or other ancient records to spread across the importance of the ‘message’ to the people.
Efforts are on to secure, preserve and then disseminate that valuable information for the benefit of the people, particularly the local and foreign scholars.
“Preservation of priceless manuscripts by digitalisation them is one of our efforts to pay tributes to those who had tirelessly worked to impart the ‘knowledge’, Minister for Archives and Tourism Vatti Vasanth Kumar told media persons at the Secretariat on Friday.
He said that, “at a time when there was no print medium and print facility, eminent scholars of ancient origin made efforts to preserve the age old Indian culture and the then writings imparted knowledge through mere palm leaves and other such parchments in the absence of papers.”
Mr Vasant Kumar was speaking after releasing five such valuable writings in the form of catalogues.
The five catalogues, namely two Urdu Manuscripts, two Telugu Records and another in Sanskrit have been released at a function the Minister for as the Chief Guest.
Acharya Sripada Subramanyam and Higher Education Special Chief Secretary CR Biswal were also present on the occasion.
The two Urdu manuscripts were descriptive catalogues highlighting the Urdu records, which gave information on as many as 1342 Urdu scripts.
Poet Nasiruddin Hashmi is believed to have braved many a hurdle to bring out these two Urdu catalogues in 1950.
History, science, biography, philosophy, language science, religion and arts and literature find place in the first catalogue with lucid indications for readers’ pleasure.
Islamic literature in eight parts has been preserved in the second catalogue.
Pronunciation principles that are mandatory for reading the Holy Quran, explanation and translation of the Holy Quran, systems, confidence, prayers, teachings, rational arguments and Sufism.
Both the Telugu volumes present information on 523 ancient writings which were published for the first time.
Yaksha songs, Puranas, Keerthanas and connected material figure in the Telugu volumes.
Shathakalu, Dandakalu, examples, grammar, Stotrams, literature related to Andhra Rigveda, ethics and connected information also find place in the two volumes.
In the fifth catalogue, information related to 1288 ancient scripts was given in Sanskrit which was said to be useful to the students of all categories as a result of efforts put in by pundits and scholars.
This Sanskrit volume contains particulars related to sciences on Alankara, ancient Puranas, Kama, Poetry, grammar, astrology, drama, yoga, ethics, Vaastu, medical, engineering, sculpture, art,
architecture, music, dance, teaching principles among others.
Preserving such ancient and knowledgeable records was itself a tribute to the ancient authors, observed the Minister.
INN