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A Study of the Manuscripts of the Woolner Collection, Lahore

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Ramacchandran

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The project makes a major, but largely inaccessible and little-studied collection of Sanskrit manuscripts (mss.), the A.C. Woolner Collection of the Punjab University Library (PUL), Lahore, Pakistan, accessible again to the scholarly world and conducts focussed research on the Collection in a cooperative project involving PUL, Geumgang University (GGU), Nonsan, Korea, and the University of Vienna (Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies [ISTB]).

The basic task of the gradual digitization and digital cataloguing of the Sanskrit mss. falls to PUL and GGU, and is done in scholarly and technical collaboration and coordination with ISTB, where the main research component of the project is located. It consists of three major parts:
  1. the analysis and evaluation of the philosophical manuscripts of the Collection (1,266 mss.), resulting in the establishment of a descriptive digital catalogue following international standards and highlighting the importance of the individual mss., and a connected sophisticated, prosopographically oriented data base presenting all information that can be extracted from the initial passages and colophons of the mss.;
  2. a study of the history of the Collection in the wider context of the flourishing Sanskritic culture of pre-partition Lahore and the cultural–intellectual history of this city of celebrated multi-traditional learning, culture and intercultural exchange during the relevant period (ca. 1880-1947), with special emphasis on the history of its philosophical mss.;
  3. in-depth philological work on some selected mss., with an initial focus on a ms. of the Nāṭyaśāstra(NŚ), the foundational work on ancient Indian histrionics.
Research conducted in part 2 relies on the analyses and research on the data gathered in part 1 and on extensive archival work in South Asia, especially in Lahore itself. For part 3, a semi-critical edition of the fifth chapter of the NŚ, which deals with the ritual preliminaries of a theatrical performance, has been established on the basis of the sole NŚ manuscript in the Woolner Collection, three Nepalese mss. from the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project, and the published editions.The project throws light on the little-explored Sanskritic culture of the Punjab and its treasures, which have been virtually inaccessible for more than half a century, with an emphasis on the Brahminical cultural and philosophical component, and contributes to our knowledge of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultural history of the region as exemplified by a specific institutional history and the cultural–intellectual history related to it.

A Study of the Manuscripts of the Woolner Collection, Lahore
 
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[h=2]Lahore[/h]
  1. * Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Punjab University Library, Lahore, Vol. 2, 1941, Ser. No. 263 (p. 17) [ABC 145; B 0535]
    = Card catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts in the Punjab University Library,Lahore, Acc. No. 3031
    • Siglum: La[SUP]D[/SUP] (digitised)
    • Details: paper, Devanagari, 187 (83 and 104) fol., compl., scribe: Santabhaṭṭa, son of Sakhārāma (f. 104r).
  2. Collection of Pandit Radhakrishna
    Pustakānām Sūcīpatram (48 pages), No. 14 [ABC 299; B 0887]
    • Details: n/a
    • Remarks: This list of the important collection of manuscripts belonging to Pandit Radhakrishna, Lahore, was written by Rajaram Shastri of Kashmir, who may have been a contemporary of Stein (1862-1943; cf. Unmesh 1998 Vol. II, No. 10). Radhakrishna may be "Radha Krishn, son of Madsudan, the family priest of Maharaja Ranjit Singh" (1780-1839); see Syad Muhammad Latif's "Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities with an Account of Its Mondern Institutions, Inhabitants, Their Trade, Customs, &c" (Lahore 1892, Reprint Lahore 2005, pp. 241-242). On Radhakrishna, the owner of the above manuscript collection, cf. also Tsutomu Yamashita, "Introduction to the Bhelasaṃhitā," Studies in the History of Indian Thought (Indo-Shisōshi Kenkyū) 9 (1997), 53-60, esp. p. 54, n. 4. As was already pointed out by Yamashita in a personal communication (email dated 11.03.2005), Janert (ABC) dates the catalogue to about 1880, probably on the basis of the information provided in Aufrecht's Catalogus Catalogorum, and also mentions a seemingly different title found with the shelf-mark “Vern. tracts Skt. 395, Pt. 8” in the India Office Library: "List of Skt.-Mss. belonging to Mahārāja Sir Dvig Bijya Sing of Bulramore, Oudh." This probably refers to Maharaja Bahadur Sir Digvijay Singh (1818-1882); cf.BALRAMPUR. If the catalogue compiled by Rajarama Shastri was prepared around 1880 and in fact relates to the collection of Maharaja Digvijay Singh, the listed manuscripts may have been somehow transferred from Lahore to Balrampur. On the date of the catalogue, see also the information found on the copy preserved in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (no. 192638 of the previous Bibliotheca Regia Berolinensis; call no. OLS Bb SA 68); according to a hand-written old note in Latin characters found on the inside of the hardcover with which the catalogue was supplied by the owning library, it was prepared around 1870. Furthermore, according to Tübingen University Library (call no. Ci XII 587), it was prepared around 1881 in Balrampur, otherwise called Balarampur. For manuscripts in Oudh, cf. ABC 233-235 (pp. 113-115) and 324-326 (pp. 154-155); B 0612-0614 (Lucknow), 0761-0764 (Oudh), 1032-1034 (United Provinces).
 
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