NatyaShastra

Digitization means acquiring, converting, storing and providing information in a computer format that is standardized, organized and available on demand from common system manuscripts, converted into compressed digital formats with specialized scanners and stored systematically for future reference.
Digitization is the primary step in order to preserve the contents of the manuscripts. It is essential to save the manuscript treasure and its knowledge base, as much as possible before it is lost forever.

 To promote access to manuscripts
 For preservation in a longer lasting medium and creating a back up copy with as close a resemblance to the original as possible.
 To reduce handling of very fragile or frequently used original manuscripts
 To make this vast archival resource accessible to the users.

There are various types of catalogues, i.e. Card Index, Accession Register, Triennial Catalogue & Descriptive Catalogue. Descriptive Cataloguing system is followed for cataloguing manuscripts and their digitization.

A Descriptive Catalogue furnishes a detailed description of the manuscript in three parts –
a) Physical Description,
b) Catalogue Description,
c) Publication Description.
A scholar requires these three parts when he/she takes up any manuscript for research or critical editing, but when a cataloguer prepares the catalogue upon direct consultation with the manuscript, the catalogue description is not necessary. The cataloguer may also give information of copies of a manuscript available in other repositories.
Physical Description
1. The name of repository or institution
2. Serial No. or Record No.
3. Title
4. Other Title
5. Author
6. Joint Author
7. Commentary
8. Scribe
9. Scribe & Place
10. Script
11. Language
12. Status: Complete/Incomplete
13. Condition of manuscript
14. Subject
15. Material
16. No. of Folios
17. Missing Folios
18. No. of Syllables (aksaras)
19. No. of lines in a page
20. No. of letters in a line
21. No. of Granthas
22. Length/Width
23. Illustrations
24. Reviser/Translator/Reviser of commentary
25. Beginning Line
26. Ending Line
27. Colophon
28. Post Colophon
29. Contents
30. Remarks

1. Title of the catalogue
2. Cataloguer/Editor
3. Special Collection
4. Year
5. Serial No.
6. Volume
7. Part No.
8. Bundle No.
9. Manuscript No.
10. Library Acc. No.

1. Title
2. Editor
3. Translator
4. Translation
5. Language
6. Publisher
7. Place
8. Year

• Record No.
The serial number of manuscripts of the repository that starts from 1 to the total number of manuscripts.
• Date of data collection
The date, when data was collected or recorded in this prescribed format.
• Institution/Personal Collection
Refers to the entity responsible for making the resource available. Institute refers to a University, library, Trust, NGO, Govt. organization, temple, mosque or any other organization managed by more than one person. Personal collection refers to an individual or private collection.
• Address - The complete postal address of the institution or individual that owns.
• The manuscript Title - A name given to the resource or text or object
This refers to ‘shirshaka' such as ‘ Natyashastra', ‘ Raghuvamsa' . The title should be as written in the manuscript without vibhaktyanta or regional variations in pronunciations. It is found either at the beginning of the text or in the colophon, inter colophon or post colophon. If not available at the beginning or end of the colophon, the name may be written within brackets or in the remarks column after comparison with other texts. If there are no means available to find out the name of the text then fill in ‘unknown'. If the text comes with a commentary, the title of the commentary shall be included. e.g. 'Bhagavadgita Tikasahita '. If the text contains only a commentary, the title should be Bhagavadgitatika or the name of commentary. Alternative titles or parallel titles, if any, must also be noted.

o The person primarily responsible for creating the intellectual content of the text.
o The name of the author may be found at the beginning or the end or in the colophon of the text.
o If the name is not found then ‘unknown' may be written.
o No name must be written even if the cataloguer can identify the author on his/her own.
o Cataloguer can write the history or any information about the author in ‘Remarks'.
o Identification of the author can be made with the help of key words like kriti, rachita, virachita, etc.
Joint Author This refers to person/s jointly responsible for creating the intellectual content of the manuscript, usually the son or successor of the first author who completes the text either simultaneously or later.

Refers to the notes explaining or interpreting a written text/document:
o The different names for a commentary are ‘tika', tippana' ‘tippanika', ‘avachuri', ‘bhashya', ‘vritti', ‘bhasha tika', etc.
o A text may contain more than one commentary and, if so, these must be mentioned.

The person primarily responsible for interpreting the intellectual content of a text; Author of the commentary; also known as ‘tikakara',‘tikakarta', ‘bhasyakarta' ‘vrttikara' etc.

Language (systems of meaning) in which the text is written. There may be several different languages used in a single manuscript, such as Sanskrit or Hindi with a Marathi commentary and the script for all these languages may be the same.

Refers to the recognized signs and characters used to represent the units of language in a systematic fashion, such as Newari, Grantha, Brahmi or Sharada.

Date of creation of manuscript by the scribe/writer
o It must be distinguished from the date of authorship of the text itself. Here, date refers to when a particular manuscript was put to writing.
o It may available in the post colophon (uttara pushpika), although it may also appear in the beginning of the manuscript.
o The date may appear in several ways – sometimes in Arabic numerals and sometimes through symbols of deities or nature such as, Indu -1, Yama - 2, Bhuvana - 3, Veda 4, BANa – 5, etc. and counted from right to left side for decoding the date.
o If the date is not found, ‘Not available' must be written.
o Sometimes you may have to derive the date of a text on the basis of comparisons with other versions of the text or carefully studying the script or dating of the material on which it is written.
o Some conversions of the decoding the dates are given below:
1. Kaliyuga samvat – 3101 = A.D.
2. Veeranirvana samvat – 487 = A.D.
3. Maurya samvat – 320 = A.D.
4. Vikram samvat – 57 = A.D.
5. Shaka samvat + 78 = A.D.
6. Kalichuri samvat + 248 = A.D.
7. Gupta samvat + 320 = A.D.
8. Gangeya samvat + 570 = A.D.
9. Harsha samvat + 606 = A.D.
10. Kollam samvat + 824 = A.D.
11. Newar samvat + 878 = A.D.
12. Chalukya Vikram samvat + 1075 = A.D.
13. Lakshmana Sena samvat + 1118 = A.D.
14. Shahur san + 599 = A.D.
15. Uttari Phasali san + 592 = A.D.
16. Dakshini Phasali san + 590 = A.D.
17. Bangali san + 593 = A.D.
18. Magi san + 638 = A.D.
19. Ilahi san + 1555 = A.D.
20. Rajyabhisheka samvat + 1674 = A.D.
21. Hizari san + 622 = A.D.

This refers to the person who has written the copy of the manuscript.
o The scribe is usually different from the author; he is the person who copies a particular manuscript.
o Name of the scribe is usually given in the post colophon or uttara pushpika .
o The name of scribe/writer, his place, father's name, his genealogy and profession should be mentioned in the format.
o The scribe just copies the text as he reads or understands from the copy codex or exemplar.
o The words like Lekhaka, pustakavachaka, etc. are used for scribes (types of scribes are Pustakalekhaka, Kayasthalekhaka and Shasanalekhaka)
o The scribe advises readers on how to use and handle the codex or manuscript and to protect it from oil, water, mouse, natural disaster, fire, humidity and insects, etc.

o Revisor is the person who prepares new, edited version of a text Sometimes the reviser reconstructs the text from one language or script to another language or script. Such revision is much often noted in Buddhist and Islamic texts.
o Translator is the person who translates the language from one to another such as from Tibetan to Sanskrit.

Refers to the topic/theme of the manuscript
o Can be expressed in keywords or phrases that describe the content of the manuscript.
o It might also include classification of data. Some most common systems of classification are:
 Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)
 Library of Congress Classification (LCC)
 Colon classification (CC)
 Universal Decimal Classification (UDC)
o For subject headings and sub-headings, Indian terminology of the concerned languages should be used, for instance, Veda, Kavya, Natya, Itihasa, Darsana, Tantra, Jyotisa etc.
o The English terminology can be used along with Indian Terminology such as Vedas> Rigvedasamhita> Vedic literature , where ‘Veda' is the broad subject category, ‘Rigvedasamhita' is the specific branch of study and ‘Vedic literature' is the English equivalent.

The starting lines or some stanzas of the text
o It should be written in Roman script with diacritical marks or in Devanagari.

The ending lines or stanzas of the text before colophon
o It should be written in Roman script with diacritical marks or in Devanagari/Arabic

It is the anukramanika, the list of chapters and sections of the treatise including key words or phrases that describe the content of the resource.

This refers to the declaration of ending the text.
o Usually contains names of author and scribe, often with a short biographical note informing us about their native place, parentage, name of the guru and so on.
o Three types of colophon: inter-text colophon, text colophon and post colophon. Inter-text colophon comes in the end of a chapter
(iti prathamo’dhyāyaḥ samāptaḥ), text colophon comes at the end of a text (iti samāpto’yaṃ granthaḥ). Generally, the author composes these two colophons and the scribe writes the post colophon ( Uttara Puspika ).
o The names of a text and author and date of composition are available in first two colophons and sometimes in the third.
o The third post colophon is very important for the study of history of a text and manuscript - it describes the composer, scribe, for what purpose he writes, date of writing or copying the manuscript, any praise of patron, dedications to patron, whether writing by order of a king or royal person, handling of manuscript, sometimes conservation and preservation of manuscript, etc. Bundle No./ Manuscript No.

o A string or number used to uniquely identify the two or more manuscripts/resources bound as one.

Refers to the number of the folios within a manuscript
o Blank folios should be included in the tally and noted in Remarks.
o One folio is counted for both 1a and 1b (obverse and reverse) sides

Height x Width, measured in centimeters

Refers to the substance or adharapatala, that the manuscript is made of including ivory, palm leaf, birch-bark, wood, gold, silver, paper, tortoise shell, agaru-bark, sanchi-pat, tula-pat, etc.

Refers to pictures or diagrams that may accompany the text. Mention must be made of:
o Total number of illustrations
o Size of each illustration
o Detailed descriptions of illustrations
o If something is drawn on one side of a folio and whether there appears text on the other side.
o If any folio or a part of folio is blank
o If space is left for an illustration on a folio, but it is not filled in
o One must note the border, margins, cover illustrations
o Name of the painter/patron is sometimes found below the illustration

o If the text is complete ‘Complete' shall be written
o If incomplete fill in ‘Incomplete'
o If one chapter of a text in a bundle is complete, it is complete, but write the name of text with chapter in bracket.
o If some folios are missing in the middle but beginning and ending exist, it is incomplete.

Refers to missing text, if at all. Indicate missing folios, if possible, like this - 1-3, 9-11,19-23.

Refers to the condition of the manuscript‘good', ‘bad', ‘ worm infected' ‘fungus', and ‘stuck folio ', ‘brittle'; ‘illustration/script illegible'.

This refers to the source on which the cataloguing is based. Not applicable in case a primary text itself is used.

o The details of the manuscript, if it is available elsewhere.
o If it is published or unpublished.
o Material of the cover of the manuscript – ivory, skin, wood etc.
o Whether there is anything written accompanying the text like notes
o The cataloguer can use this column for giving extra information
o If a number of grammatical mistakes/errors occur in the text, or the text is error-free, it should be mentioned here.
o The calligraphy, type of ink used in the text, special size or shape of manuscript, if any i.e.. gandi, kacchapi, musti, samputaphalaka, chedapati, scroll; the style of writing i.e. tripatha, caturpatha, suksmaksari, sunda and ornamentation of the text should be mentioned. Details of illustrated manuscripts should be documented – colour, illustrations, style.

If the text is printed or litho-typed:
o If the text is printed with critical edition or popular edition or vulgate edition or student edition, then refer to the title, editor, translator, language, publisher, place of publication and year of publication.
o The bibliography of the text may be given.
History of cataloguing

The cataloguer must write the information in Roman script with diacritical marks or in the original script like Devanagari, including regional languages. It should be written in Pratipadika (mula) or without vibhaktyanta in the standardized catalogue format for greater comprehension i.e. 'Gitagovinda' not Gitagovindah or Gitagovindam or Gitagovindamu or Gitagovind etc. If any variation comes in regional or national languages, the remarks field should be used. The regional variations of pronunciation and writing of letters such as ba/va, sha/sa, ta/tha etc. should be avoided.

Now let’s visit one of the leading online digital catalogue of Manuscripts. It is the National Mission for Manuscripts, established in February 2003, by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India. A unique project in its programme and mandate, the Mission seeks to unearth and preserve the vast manuscript wealth of India. India possesses an estimate of ten million manuscripts, probably the largest collection in the world. These cover a variety of themes, textures and aesthetics, scripts, languages, calligraphies, illuminations and illustrations.
The Mission has the mandate of identifying, documenting, conserving and making accessible the manuscript heritage of India. NMM is an international level comprehensive initiative which caters to the need of conserving manuscripts and disseminating knowledge contained therein. Its motto is ‘conserving the past for the future’.