Tattvabodha Vol. 5: Essays from the Lecture Series of the National Mission for Manuscripts

The National Mission for Manuscripts was established in February 2003 by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India with the purpose of locating, documenting, preserving and disseminating the knowledge content of India's handwritten manuscripts, said to be the largest collection of handwritten knowledge documents in the world. While looking ahead to reconnect with the knowledge of the past, the Mission is in the process of trying to re-contextualize the knowledge contained in manuscripts for the present and the future generations. The Mission launched a lecture series titled “Tattvabodha” in January 2005. Since then, a monthly lecture series is organized in Delhi and other academic centres all over the country. Tattvabodha has established itself as a forum for intellectual discourse, debate and discussion. Eminent scholars representing different aspects of India's knowledge systems have addressed and interacted with highly receptive audiences over the course of the past few years. This volume, fifth in the series, contains eleven papers presented by well-known authors in different Tattvabodha lectures organized by the Mission. These papers are in English, Hindi and Sanskrit, covering a variety of subjects of Indian knowledge system. The authors deliberate on topics such as the closeness of the Rigvedic language to the Proto-Indo-European language; different branches of learning in medieval Bengal; unique manuscripts of Asiatic Society; eighteenth-century Calcutta based on the leads from the British Official Records; Sanskrit as the mind of Silk Route; formation of Kashmiri language; a comparative study of Bengali, Hindi and Malayalam Ramayanas; Arabic manuscripts and Arabi-Malayalam literature of Kerala; Bhakti Literature of Rajasthan; manuscripts on Ayurveda; and published and unpublished commentaries of Bhagavata Purana. These scholarly articles should invoke keen interest among academicians, scholars and students of Indology.