Sanskrit scrolls with the time: A digital project is racing to preserve a rich past

Project Sangraha has digitised thousands of at-risk manuscripts from seven libraries across India, so far. It aims to scan 2.5 million by 2045.

How did a retired businessman in his 60s end up rescuing ancient Sanskrit manuscripts, taking crumbling pages and preserving them in digital form?

It is a story that began with a retirement plan. At 51, Sanjaya Singhal decided he would give his career another nine years, then step away from his electronic metering company, Secure.

He would study Sanskrit so that he could read the Mahabharata in the original. “Then, I wanted to pick an area of interest within the

The team of 30 — four IT specialists and 26 Sanskrit scholars — is now looking to expand. Singhal is looking to add more specialists in subject such as the Vedas, astronomy and grammar, he says.

The library had also preserved some manuscripts on microfilm. Given how easily this material degrades, Singhal decided to digitise the 900 microfilm rolls too. He and his team of 30 — four IT specialists and 26 Sanskrit scholars — also worked to develop a software program for VSM in 2019, which now acts as a library management system.

Now that things were rolling, Singhal decided to give the project a name, and enlarge its scope. He reached out to libraries across India, to tell them about his Project Sangraha (Sanskrit for “collection” or “the act of organising”).

The open-access portal sangraha.org currently features 7,000 digitised manuscripts from across seven libraries. The entries can be searched using keywords and filters. Each of the participating libraries determines its own norms for access (some manuscripts are downloadable as free PDFs; some cost ₹100 per page).

“We lost about two years to the pandemic, as operations were put on hold. But Project Sangraha aims to catalogue 2.5 million manuscripts by 2045,” Singhal says.

This endeavour will grant global access to India’s abundant heritage of knowledge, adds Saroja Bhate, chairperson of the VSM managing committee. “Manuscripts from across India, carefully preserved in closed racks and cupboards for many years, are now accessible worldwide in digital format, thanks to the Sangraha initiative.”

Singhal is now looking to expand his team, with more Sanskrit scholars and specialists in subject such as the Vedas, astronomy and grammar. This ancient language must embrace the digital age, he says. “I envision projects like this as stepping stones toward establishing a robust digital platform for Sanskrit, ultimately attracting a new generation of enthusiasts.”