Manuscripts gets digitalised to preserve rich heritage

The Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages has begun digitization of manuscripts to preserve the state's rich heritage for future generations.

The state of Jammu and Kashmir has rich culture and tradition and its glorious past is treasured in the form of its innumerable centuries-old manuscripts, which are a storehouse of information for millions of people for all around the country.

The ambitious project is being carried out under the supervision of experts from New Delhi.

"The academy has a rich resource of manuscripts which are very sacrosanct. We need to preserve them for future generations. We have decided to digitize this huge resource of manuscripts," Dr. Abdul Aziz Hajni, the secretary of the academy, said.

Jammu and Kashmir is said to be the only place in Asia where such old manuscripts can be found in abundance.

These manuscripts are related to Kashmir's religion, politics, astronomy, logic, history, mathematics, travelogues, jurisprudence, calligraphy, music and politics.

The digitized material would be subsequently put on the academy's website to facilitate world-wide viewing.

"There are a total of 650 manuscripts in Arabic, Sanskrit and Kashmiri among other languages. We need to digitize them to make them available globally and this has been a long project of the cultural academy. For over one year, we have been working on this, and more than one lakh pages have been digitized. People will able to read the material from any part of the world," said Mohammad Ashraf Taak, Chief Editor (Urdu) at the academy.

Scholars are happy with the decision as it will preserve the holy books for future generations.

"For any community remembering their roots is very necessary. The scholarly literature that we have needs to be preserved for our future generations. The cultural academy has digitized the centuries old manuscripts which are found in different languages and are very rare. Now, this literature is safe as it has been digitized," said Mufti Shafi Rehman Qasim, an Islamic scholar.

The governments, both at the state and the Centre, have taken special measures to ensure the safety of this treasure of Kashmir.