Technology To The Rescue

digitize the Dead Sea Scrolls to create digital copies of a 700-year-old palm-leaf Hindu manuscript stored in a monastery in Udupi, near Bangalore.

P.R. Mukund and Roger Easton are working on digital preservation of the Sarvamoola Granthas, a collection of 36 philosophical commentaries by Shri Madvacharya (1238-1317).

The 240 page palm leaf manuscript in Sanskrit – each leaf of which is about two feet long and two inch wide – has degraded over the years and made some of the writing difficult to read.  “It is literally crumbling to dust,” according to Mukund.

The scientists took almost 8,000 digital images of the documents in Udupi and are now transferring it to different media, including silicon wafers for long-term preservation.

“The book will never be opened again unless there is a compelling reason to do so,” Mukund was quoted in a RIT news release.

“Because every time they do, they lose some. After this, there won’t be a need to open the book.”