Kolkata: The Asiatic Society, Kolkata, has been formally designated as the key cluster centre for Eastern India under the Union Culture Ministry’s Gyan Bharatam Mission on Manuscripts.
As per the MoU, the Ministry of Culture has granted the Asiatic Society an initial allocation of Rs 40 lakh to undertake the conservation, cataloguing and digitisation of rare manuscripts.
The initiative aims to develop a comprehensive database of manuscripts across West Bengal and Eastern India and make their content accessible through a digital medium.
This move marks a decisive step towards preserving, digitising and unlocking the wisdom encoded in thousands of ancient texts written in Sanskrit, Pali, Persian, Farsi and other classical languages.
After all, founded in 1784, the Asiatic Society is one of India’s oldest centres of learning and Oriental research.
The Asoatoc Society is planning to integrate AI and ML into its digitisation drive.
A research centre is being proposed in collaboration with IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi and CDAC to develop advanced tools for transcription, translation and digital reconstruction of manuscripts.
CDAC is working on transcribing ancient scripts, while hyperspectral imaging will help recover text from damaged or faded pages.
The IIT teams are developing algorithms for script recognition and translation.
The Asiatic Society will play a leading role in establishing the National Digital Repository. This is a unified platform to share India’s manuscript heritage globally.
Funding will be released in two phases: 70 per cent initially and the remaining 30 per cent upon submission of progress and utilisation reports.
The initiative has already drawn interest from institutions such as Calcutta University, Visva Bharati, Burdwan University, State Archives, Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata Port Trust and several regional libraries.
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