• What is a Manuscript?
• How do I take care of my manuscripts?
• Where can I get information on what manuscripts are available in the country?
• Where can I see a manuscript?
• How can I get involved?

     A manuscript is a handwritten composition on paper, bark, cloth, metal, palm leaf or any other material dating back at least seventy-five years that has significant scientific, historical or aesthetic value. Lithographs and printed volumes are not manuscripts. Manuscripts are found in hundreds of different languages and scripts. Often, one language is written in a number of different scripts. For example, Sanskrit is written in Oriya script, Grantha script, Devanagari script and many other scripts.

     Manuscripts are distinct from historical records such as epigraphs on rocks, firmans, revenue records which provide direct information on events or processes in history. Manuscripts have knowledge content.

• Ensure that your manuscripts are dry and kept in a dry cabinet. Air your manuscripts regularly to prevent fungus. Take care to dust them and keep them wrapped in soft, absorbent cotton cloth. Wrap a few naphthalene balls in paper and place them near your manuscripts to keep insects away. Be careful to prevent moisture from harming them.
• For further information please look at the pdf to see what can be done at an individual, personal level.
• If the suggestions in the above prove unviable for you, please get in touch with the local/nearest MCC ( Manuscript Conservation Center ), and take their assistance.
  
  

• Please refer to our database - although at the moment it remains incomplete, it is being updated even as you read this.
• Alternatively, there are several publications on the range of literature and literary traditions in India , most of which have come down to us in the form of hand-written manuscripts. There are also publications on manuscripts. Contact your local university/ institution of higher learning/ library for further guidance.
  

There are manuscripts in most museums, district libraries, archives and granth bhandars. Alternatively, if you look in your local temple, mosque, gurudwara, matha or place of religious worship, you will in all likelihood find a handwritten manuscript - a Bhagwad Gita, Koran and much more!

Please feel free to contact us or our Manuscript Resource Centres, Manuscript Conservation Centres or Manuscript Partner Centres at any time if you know of manuscripts that could be documented or that are in need of conservation. The Mission also holds regular lecture series, seminars and other events through which we hope to join hands with the public. Please keep check the website for upcoming events. The Mission is a people's mission, so please feel free to write to us as we welcome your suggestions and your interest.