Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: National Manuscript Mission
Why in the News?
The Union Ministry of Culture is planning to revive and relaunch the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) and is considering the formation of an autonomous body to help preserve India’s ancient texts.
Why Center is again re-evolving this scheme?
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About the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM):
- Formed in 2003 by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture.
- It is managed by the National Archives of India.
- Objective:
- To document, conserve, digitize, and disseminate India’s manuscript heritage.
- The mission has set up over 100 Manuscripts Resource Centres and Manuscripts Conservation Centres across India.
- India has an estimated 10 million manuscripts, covering a range of themes, languages, scripts, and illustrations.
- What is a Manuscript?
- A manuscript is a handwritten document on materials like paper, bark, cloth, metal, or palm leaf.
- These documents are at least 75 years old and hold scientific, historical, or aesthetic value.
- Manuscripts primarily contain knowledge content, unlike historical records that provide direct historical information.
Achievements and Challenges:
- The NMM has documented metadata for 5.2 million manuscripts and digitized 300,000 titles, though only a third have been uploaded.
- Concerns were raised over mismatches between digitized data and original manuscripts, requiring correction.
- Of the 130,000 manuscripts uploaded, only 70,000 are accessible for viewing due to the absence of an access policy, which limits public availability, especially since 80% of manuscripts are privately owned.
- NMM has conducted preventive and curative conservation of 9 crore folios over the past 21 years.
PYQ:[2008] Recently, the manuscripts of which one of the following have been included in the UNESCO’s Memory of World Register? (a) Abhidhamma Pitaka (b) Mahabharata (c) Ramayana (d) Rig-Veda |
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