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Persian Bible in Awadhi care!
THE NATIONAL Research Laboratory for Conservation of Cultural Property (NRLC), Lucknow is restoring a rare and old Bible. This Bible?s rarity lies in the fact that it?s hand-written. It dates back to the 16th Century and has come to Lucknow from Gujarat.
THE NATIONAL Research Laboratory for Conservation of Cultural Property (NRLC), Lucknow is restoring a rare and old Bible. This Bible’s rarity lies in the fact that it’s hand-written. It dates back to the 16th Century and has come to Lucknow from Gujarat.
The manuscript has come from the only one of its kind Persian library in the country in Gujarat.
“Had we not brought it here, it would have perished,” said Virendra Kumar, senior technical restorer, NRLC, who is engaged in restoration of the Holy book since early this month.
In fact, the NRLC has already restored more than half of this 209- page-holy book and will accomplish the job by February-end.
The manuscript is the property of the Meherjirana Library, Navsari, Gujarat which as about 600 rare and Old Persian manuscripts. Out of these 600 rarities, over 200 are on the verge of getting destroyed if the government or some agency does not take it up to restore them, said one of the team members engaged in the Bible’s restoration.
“The library was not in a position to pay any money to NRLC, but still as we took up the restoration work for them, as it is a very rare manuscript and we did it as a sample work for them,” said Virendra Kumar.
How did NRLC do it?
After coming to know that the Bible was in an extremely fragile condition, Virendra Kumar went to Navsari and brought it to the lab in his personal care in mid-December. The Bible was sent in Fumigation chamber where a ten-day fumigation was done to get rid of insects, insect eggs, fungal stains etc on and in the holy book. Then from fumigation chamber, the pages of the book were separated. And then a team of seven interns started working and each day they are able to conserve about 10 pages. “Each page we coat with conservation material after restoring the page.” And now the Bible can last for more centuries.
