The “National Seminar on Cataloguing, editing and Publication of Ancient Indian Manuscripts on Science and Technology” held on March 25th 28th 2019 at Bangalore [2]

The “National Seminar on Cataloguing, editing and Publication of Ancient   Indian Manuscripts on Science and Technology” held on March  25^th  28^th 2019 at Bangalore [2]

5.15 to 5.40 pm prof. Khincha, Ex-Chairman at Manipal University Jaipur : keynote address given by Kincha. “Though Thatachariar invited me to present keynote address, I do not know how I am fit to be here to do so,” thus, he started and went to point out that Jaina manuscripts of 1400 years old are available. Preservation of manuscripts started long back. There a manuscripts available in the libraries of Vatican London etc. ow many manuscripts have been digitized and useful for further benefit is not known. More digitization means more funding. Digitization should give information for carrying out research s that it is useful. Advanced image techniques can be used for digitization. Charred mss, where indentations were not visible, such techniques could be used. Archimedes project[1] is used to decipher manuscripts…When characters are recognized, then, they can be subjected to machine translation. Manuscript is one time documentation, whereas, digitization can be done again and again with new techniques.

Subject of digital humanities. Digital archives of India[2] is carried on at IIT, Kharagpur. Whether these manuscripts are preserved in the manuscript form or digitized form, their usage is important. Society has to adjust with technology. Nearly 30 years were taken to adjust with the introduction of sewing machine.

5.45 to 6.05 pm – Sri Manjunatha:  Sri Manjunatha has been working with Patanjali group of Industries. He has been visiting many places and collecting manuscripts. He saw 9000 manuscripts gathering dust in the Oriental Manuscript Library, Mysuru, 6000 in Mysore palace shed, 60,000 in Banaras Hindu University, he also purchased manuscripts for research at Patanjajil Research Institute, where, 45,000 manuscripts were there. He asked the British library for taking copies, but, they refused. He got manuscript for curing cancer, but, he would not tell the source. They have developed medicine for Dengu fever. And HIV aso, they have medicine, but, the patient has to come to Haridwar and they give medicine free. They have manufactured medicine with the combination of Arjuna rishta [pathimara] with other Ayurvedic formulations, that would clear all blocks to heart. Baba Ramdev wants all research should be done in Sanskrit only, so that the westerners could not steal our knowledge, even, if they want to do that, they have to learn Sanskrit to copy. In that way Sanskrit lives. Baba is ready to buy manuscripts.

6.10 to 6.39 pm Lakhsmi Thatacharya: In his presidential speech, Lakshmi Thatacharya pointed out that it is very important to extract information from the manuscripts. To some extent in shastra University, the IIT students are made to take interest in manuscripts, as they have one paper on manuscriptology. In Kanchi University, Computer science students are reciting Sanskrit mantras, but, to what extent, they are interested in Sanskrit is not known. When he was in MIT, he asked the experts to give importance to linguistics, while researching in the recognition of characters etc. For digitization of one manuscript man years are required, if that is the case, for digitization of millions of manuscripts, the Kaliyuga is not enough to complete the job. Dating of manuscripts is done paleographical method. C 14 can also be used for dating. M.S.Dwarakadass is interested in manufacturing new alloys with the combinations given in the manuscripts. Manufacture of several alloys have been tried.  Trinetra…….is mentioned. For alloying, it is mentioned ruruka has to be added. It is nothing but bone of ass / deer. So it was also added and tried, but, e cud get only 40% success.  There have been manuscripts on stones. In one manuscript, it is given that when juice of two herbs were applied on the surface of stones, the surface becomes soft and one may write / inscribe easily and the next morning, it becomes hard. Definitely, it is good method.  There are manuscripts to control different types of fevers, however, they have not been deciphered and encoded completely to distinguish the fevers and medicines mentioned for cure.

6.40 to 6.55 pm – Sanjay Singhal:  Sanjay Singhal from Jodhpur, It and software business told his experience at the World Sanskrit Conference held at Vancouver, where 500 participated 300 from India and 200 from other countries. When parallel paper reading sessions were going on, Indian delegates were attending to Indian paper presentation session and foreigners to their session. In other words, there was a divide between these two expert groups. Western scholarship does not respect Indian scholarship. Yet, there was none to question, when foreigners were presenting papers, even, belittling Sanskrit. Thus, there has been a great divide between the Indian and non Indian Sanskrit scholarship. Thus, the inauguration function was over.

Why many people, organizations and institutions engage in the same job?: As a researcher and attending hundreds of seminars, conferences and workshops for the last 40 years, I could find that many people, organizations and institutions engage in the same job of collecting, Cataloguing, editing and Publication of Ancient   Indian Manuscripts on many subjects and evidently including that of Science and Technology, as many deal with such subjects. In Bangalore itself, dozens of organizations have been engaged in doing the same work[3]. Thus, one news go like this[4], “Thousands of ancient medical manuscripts, including several written on palm leaves centuries ago, are now available at the click of a button thanks to a decade long effort by researchers at Bengaluru’s TransDisciplinary University (TDU). Thousands of ancient medical manuscripts, including several written on palm leaves centuries ago, are now available at the click of a button thanks to a decade long effort by researchers at Bengaluru’s TransDisciplinary University (TDU).”In spite of the fact that the invading hoards looted, burned, destroyed and carried away crores of manuscript, that still, 50,000,000 mss are available proves the fact that Indians have been recording their past in the mass for many years, as these are only copies or reprinted books of the old ones.

27-03-2019- Mss seminar -N. V. Prasada Rao, M. J. Nagarajan, H. S. Sudharshan

27-03-2019- Mss seminar -N. V. Prasada Rao, T. N. Sudharshan. M. J. Nagarajan, H. S. Sudharshan

27-03-2019- Mss seminar -audience – centre from the stage

27-03-2019- Mss seminar -my bag.audience. LHS

View of the audience RHS from the stage

Academic Sessions Session 1 – 27-03-2019: 9.30 to 11.00 AM: The technical session actually started on 27^th with the paper presentation of the following: with the Chairperson: Prof. Ch. N V Prasada Rao,  Retd. Prof. AP chaired the session and theme was “Manuscripts on Medical Sciences”.

Sl. No. Name of the Presenter Topic 1 T. N. Sudharshan, Infinity Foundation, Bangalore AIyush – AI enabling the Āyurveda Ecosystem 2 Mr. M. J. Nagarajan, Independent researcher, Chennai The Manuscripts attributed to Siddhas and their Critical Study 3 H. S. Sudhsrshan, Research Associate, Centre for Ancient Histor, Jain University, Bangalore. A Critical study Vridda-gargiya-jyotisha based on manuscripts Sudharsan stressed upon the AI enabling the Āyurveda Ecosystem. The 7th World Ayurveda Congress to be held in Kolkata during December 1–4, 2016 has very apt focal theme ‘Strengthening the Ayurveda Ecosystem’. It is very heartening to note that eminent biomedical scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan, Secretary, Department of Health Research and Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research has accepted to be Chairperson of the Organizing Committee. Already, she and AYUSH Secretary Shri Ajit Sharan have initiated AYUSH-ICMR Mission for collaborative scientific research. This is very promising example of integrative approach where confluence of traditional and modern systems of knowledge can strengthen the Ayurveda ecosystem to shape the future global health. The establishment of AYUSH independent ministry has a commitment towards strengthening the AYUSH ecosystem. Health problems involving chronic diseases, non communicable diseases etc, there is a scope for complementary as well as preferential choice of any system including Ayurveda. There are a large number of clinical setups in national/state Ayurveda institutions, but the quality publication outcome is low. In the present article, being a scientist and science manager, I have just summarized my opinion to strengthen and growth of Ayurveda. Development of special validation methods for Ayurveda research based on Ayurveda principle is an hour of need. Randomized controlled trials on the use of new innovations are needed in Ayurveda. To strengthen Ayurveda, interdisciplinary approach may prove beneficial. Value addition based synergy and partnerships with ICMR/DBT/DST/ICAR would be beneficial for the growth of Ayurveda[5].   © K. V. Ramakrishna Rao 30-03-2019

[1] The Archimedes Project aims to develop model interactive environments for scholarly research on the history of mechanics and engineering from antiquity to the Renaissance. It is designed to integrate research and knowledge dissemination in new ways and to serve as a proof-of-concept project for open digital libraries on topics in the history of science.  http://archimedes.fas.harvard.edu/

[2] http://nationalarchives.nic.in/ and http://www.ndpp.in/digitalarchive/

[3] Economic Times, From Palm leaves to Computers – ancient medical scripts turn digital, By Bharat Joshi, ET Bureau, Updated: Jun 30, 2016, 10.34 AM IST.

[4] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/from-palm-leaves-to-computers-ancient-medical-scripts-turn-digital/articleshow/52984142.cms

[5] Katoch, V. M. “Planning action for strengthening the ecosystem for Ayurvedic research.” Journal of Ayurveda and integrative medicine 9.4 (2018): 248-249.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0975947618310210

[6]  Susarla, Sai, Parag Deshmukh, and K. Gopinath. Architectural Considerations for Scalable Indic Document Analytics.,

[7] http://cse.iitkgp.ac.in/resgrp/cnerg/sclws/papers/susarla.pdf.

[8] Sarvadevabhatla, Ravi Kiran, and R. Venkatesh Babu. Category-Epitomes: Discriminatively Minimalist Representations for Object Categories. arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.00082, 2015.

[9] Sarvadevabhatla, Ravi Kiran, Sudharshan Suresh, and R. Venkatesh Babu. “Object category understanding via eye fixations on freehand sketches.” IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 26.5 (2017): 2508-2518.

[10] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.06554.pdf