New Pirate readings

[Story]

Ever wonder what the pirates that roamed the Indian Ocean and Red Sea used to roll their cartridges, wipe their tushes and occassionally read?

History in your hands: 17th century manuscripts to be published soon

Swapna Nair

http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.p...p?newsid=172219

Ahmedabad, March 3: HISTORY stares hard in your face as you turn these tattered old pages, in a bid to figure out what the pictures mean. Painted using vegetable colours and written in Devnagri script, these are testimonials of the era that witnessed some of the greatest wars, unforgettable love stories. It also treasures interesting Ayurvedic remedies, basics of Sanskrit and Prakrit grammar and also has derivations of your boring mathematics equations, explained in pictorial form!

These 17th century picture manuscripts are some of the rare ones, presently in possession of Bhogilal Leherchand Institute of Indology, New Delhi. The indexing and compiling of these 20,000 manuscripts has just got over, informs Dr Jitendra Shah of L D Institute of Indology, which carried out the task.

Soon, the information preserved in these 400-year-old manuscripts will be published in the form of books for scholars and laymen.

There’s also an interesting story behind how these Jain manuscripts travelled from Pakistan to India, way back in 1966, 19 years after the Partition.

Shah, who has researched on Shabdabhedaprakash (dictionary), part of the rare collection, says it was hidden by the Jains during the Partition at a place called Gujranwala, which is now a leading industrial city of Pakistan.

‘‘During those days, Gujranwala with a majority of Muslim population was home to 700 Jain families. The place also had two Jain temples. Both the communities lived in harmony. In fact, Muslim members would consult the Jain saints, fondly called Bhavdas, (wise men) for any problem they faced,’’ Shah informs. But during the Partition riots, he says, the temples in the vicinity were burnt by angry mobs.

‘‘At that time the saints decided to hide these 20,000 manuscripts before escaping to Amritsar, since taking it along was risky. They carefully placed it in 58 tea cartons. They then built a brick structure in a narrow, isolated lane in the area, put the cartons in and cemented it,’’ he says.

Later, after the Partition, when the Property Commission was introduced for transfer of property, these Jains claimed those manuscripts. But Pakistan government could not trace the exact spot where they had hidden the boxes, he informs.

The communication went on for 18 years. During the Prime Ministership of Indira Gandhi, a Jain delegation was sent to retrieve the manuscripts. ‘‘To their surprise they found that the whole area was transformed into a vegetable market. After lot of searching, the spot was located, and boxes finally retrieved,’’ he says.