Manuscripts Crying for Help
The Hindu reports on the fund crunch that hinders the efforts of The Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute to preserve its collection.
A funds crunch has come in the way of The Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute’s project to preserve thousands of old manuscripts and books.
Such preservation initiatives are important for the over-six-decade-old Institute at Madras Sanskrit College, Mylapore, as it serves as a reference library for researchers and scholars. The collection at the Institute includes around 50,000 books in Sanskrit and books on oriental research and learning and Indological studies. It is also home to journals in several Indian and foreign languages, besides 1,000 manuscripts in Grantham, Tamil and Sanskrit dating back to 500 to 600 years.
Run on public donations, the Institute is finding it difficult to mobilise enough funds to sustain its activities. According to institute director V. Kameswari, with the limited resources, only half of the salary could be paid to the seven staffers.
Describing the institute as the only library of its kind in south India, she pointed out that renowned persons, including former President S. Radhakrishnan, have donated rare books to it.
Maintenance of the collection, however, has become difficult in the absence of adequate funds. The books are getting brittle day by day, she said, pointing out that photocopying and microfilming them were costly.