The Issue

India 's manuscripts, spread all over the country and abroad, are composed in different Indian languages such as Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Urdu, Persian and the different regional Indian languages. They are written in different scripts such as Brahmi, Sarada, Modi, Newari, Grantha among others. Given India 's immense linguistic diversity and sophistication, many documents are inaccessible because there is little knowledge of the languages and scripts used. One of the major challenges is that there are a dwindling number of scholars who can read, decipher, read, translate, take up research and interpret India 's manuscripts. It is crucial that capacity-building in terms of training in manuscriptology is taken up by the Mission on a large scale.

The Strategy

The Mission seeks to address the twin problem of the dwindling number of scholars and the unavailability of young scholars to take up manuscriptology, through

• Organizing Manuscriptology and Paleography Courses of two-three weeks' duration in all parts of the country.
• Organizing Refresher and Advanced courses for those who have already been trained, by selecting the better students who took part.
• Selecting a handful of the best talent from them to be affiliated with the Mission through MRC-s as Grade I and Grade II Fellows. Grade I Fellows will be attached to an MRC and a senior scholar to work on transcribing, collating and critically editing a selected manuscript, while Grade II Fellows would be given the work of transcription and collation of select manuscripts.
• Linking up with research and publication: If found suitable, the Mission may take up the work of Grade II Fellows for publication.