Professor Anne Feldhaus, Arizona State University
2005 award - pilot project
£11,935 for 12 months.
Enlarged
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Marathi is a New Indo-Aryan language with inscriptional evidence extending back to AD1012 and literature beginning in the 13th century. Manuscripts of this literature are found in university and monastery libraries and in private homes, mostly in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Some Marathi manuscripts are extremely rare and valuable; a significant number are copies of texts that have not yet been published and of which most people have therefore not even heard. These manuscripts provide most of the extant evidence for the early phase of one of the major regional cultures of India. Many are in a state of neglect and have not been systematically catalogued, in most cases they are not carefully preserved and in no case have they been made easily available to scholars.
Under this pilot project to be carried out with the marathi Manuscript Centre in Pune, as many manuscripts of Old- and Middle-Marathi will be collected as can be obtained and 300 selected manuscripts will be microfilmed. The overall goal is to collect, preserve and make accessible these manuscripts, of which it is estimated there are more than 25,000 in Maharashtra.
