हिंदीOn this day
Photo: Ms Sarah Welch · CC0
Manuscript · Copied c. 1464–1800s CE; on the UNESCO register since 2007

Rigveda manuscripts at BORI, Pune

Found
Collected for the Bombay government’s search for Sanskrit manuscripts in the 1870s and 1880s, including birch-bark copies from Kashmir
Kept at
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune

Thirty manuscripts of the Rigveda, some with Sayana’s commentary, that UNESCO entered in its Memory of the World Register in 2007.

What it says

The set includes paper copies in Devanagari and birch-bark copies in Sharada script from Kashmir, the oldest dated to about 1464 CE. Several mark the svaras, the accents of recitation. Max Müller’s printed Rigveda with Sayana’s commentary drew on manuscripts of this kind.

What it proves

The Veda has always lived in recitation, passed from guru to shishya; UNESCO recognised that oral tradition in 2003. These manuscripts are its written witnesses, and they agree with the recited text syllable for syllable.

Evidence for

Vedic Rishis and the Itihasa

The Vedic tradition

Evidence

The Arthashastra manuscript found in 1905Manuscript
Text of Kautilya, minister of Chandragupta Maurya; this Grantha copy c. 16th century, identified 1905

The Arthashastra manuscript found in 1905

The 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 Spitzer manuscriptManuscript
c. 2nd century CE (radiocarbon 80–230 CE)

The Spitzer manuscript

The oldest philosophical manuscript in Sanskrit, named after Moritz Spitzer who first studied it, which holds a list of the parvas of the Mahabharata.

The Bower manuscriptManuscript
c. 6th century CE; acquired 1890

The Bower manuscript

Birch-bark leaves in Gupta-era Brahmi holding seven texts, three of them on medicine, including the Navanitaka.

The Gilgit manuscriptsManuscript
c. 5th–7th century CE; found 1931

The Gilgit manuscripts

Birch-bark books of Buddhist scripture in Sanskrit, the oldest manuscript collection to survive in the subcontinent.

The Bakhshali manuscriptManuscript
Radiocarbon dates between the 3rd and 10th centuries CE (2017; the dating is debated)

The Bakhshali manuscript

Seventy fragile leaves of birch bark holding a book of arithmetic in Sharada script, in which zero is written as a dot.

Manuscripts of the Sushruta SamhitaManuscript
Oldest dated copy 878 CE

Manuscripts of the Sushruta Samhita

A 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.

The Mewar RamayanaManuscript
1649–1653 CE

The Mewar Ramayana

Valmiki’s Ramayana in more than four hundred paintings, made at the Sisodia court while Mewar still refused to bow to the Mughals in spirit.

Tipu Sultan’s letters to the Sringeri mathManuscript
1790s CE

Tipu Sultan’s letters to the Sringeri math

About thirty letters from Tipu Sultan to the Jagadguru of Sringeri, among them his reply after Maratha horsemen raided the math in 1791.