Photo: Unknown scribe · Public domainThe palm-leaf copy that brought Kautilya’s Arthashastra, the ancient book of statecraft, back into print after centuries in which it was known only by quotation.
The text, in fifteen books, covers the training of the king, the duties of ministers, revenue and the treasury, law courts, spies, foreign policy and war. Shamasastry published the Sanskrit text in 1909 and an English translation in 1915.
It recovered a full Indian science of government, and changed how the world saw ancient Bharat’s political thought.
ManuscriptThe oldest philosophical manuscript in Sanskrit, named after Moritz Spitzer who first studied it, which holds a list of the parvas of the Mahabharata.
ManuscriptBirch-bark leaves in Gupta-era Brahmi holding seven texts, three of them on medicine, including the Navanitaka.
ManuscriptBirch-bark books of Buddhist scripture in Sanskrit, the oldest manuscript collection to survive in the subcontinent.
ManuscriptSeventy fragile leaves of birch bark holding a book of arithmetic in Sharada script, in which zero is written as a dot.
ManuscriptA palm-leaf copy of the Sushruta Samhita made in Nepal in 878 CE, older than any other dated copy and older than the commentary of Dalhana that shaped the printed text.
ManuscriptThirty manuscripts of the Rigveda, some with Sayana’s commentary, that UNESCO entered in its Memory of the World Register in 2007.
ManuscriptValmiki’s Ramayana in more than four hundred paintings, made at the Sisodia court while Mewar still refused to bow to the Mughals in spirit.
ManuscriptAbout thirty letters from Tipu Sultan to the Jagadguru of Sringeri, among them his reply after Maratha horsemen raided the math in 1791.
