Powerful words

Ancient manuscripts that hold important clues to India’s intellectual and religious traditions will be the focus of a new study.

A major exercise in ‘linguistic archaeology’ has set out to complete a comprehensive survey of Cambridge University Library’s South Asian manuscript collection, which includes the oldest dated and illustrated Sanskrit manuscript known worldwide.

Written on now-fragile birch bark, palm leaf and paper, the 2,000 manuscripts in the collection express centuries-old South Asian thinking on religion, philosophy, astronomy, grammar, law and poetry.

Read the full story at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/detail.php?news=315 …