Cambridge launches study on ancient India
Times of India, Updated On:29-Apr-2012
London: Britain’s Cambridge University, one of the world’s leading seats of learning, has embarked on a landmark exercise in ‘linguistic archaeology’, which is expected to unearth greater knowledge of India’s ancient intellectual and religious traditions.
The effort will involve completion of a comprehensive examination of the South Asian manuscript collection at the university’s library, which includes the oldest dated and illustrated Sanskrit document in the world.
The estimated 2,000 manuscripts in Cambridge’s collection are said to reflect South Asian thinking on astronomy, grammar, law, philosophy, poetry and religion. Some of these are written on now-fragile birch bark and palm leaf.
Heading the project will be Sanskrit specialists Dr Vincenzo Vergiani and Dr Eivind Kahrs. The former said: “In a world that seems increasingly small, every artefact documenting the history of ancient civilizations has become part of a global heritage to be carefully preserved and studied.” He added: “Among such artefacts, manuscripts occupy a distinctive place—they speak to us with the actual words of long-gone men and women, bringing their beliefs, ideas and sensibilities to life.”
He, then, explained: “One reason this collection is so important is because of the age of many of the manuscripts. In the heat and humidity of India, materials deteriorate quickly and manuscripts needed to be copied again and again. As a result, many of the early Indian texts no longer exist.” A discovery made in 1883 represents treasures like a 10th-century Buddhist Sanskrit manuscript from India – the oldest dated and illustrated Sanskrit manuscript known anywhere. Some of the oldest holdings were discovered in Nepal. These now priceless cultural and historical artefacts were rescued in the 1870s from a disused temple, where they had survived largely by chance.
“The word Sanskrit means refined or perfected. From a very early stage, its speakers were obsessed with handing down their sacred texts intact,” Vergiani elaborated. “Out of this developed an attention to how the language works. A grammatical tradition arose that produced, around the 4th century BC, the work of Panini, an amazing intellectual achievement and arguably the beginning of linguistics worldwide, which made the language stable and transmissible.” It is this robustness that Dr Vergiani believes explains how the language became so prevalent in South Asia — a situation that has been likened to the spread of Latin across Europe.