Pushtimarg with God’s grace has received traditional study of scriptures from scholar Aacharyas and Disciples. Along with study and teaching of scriptures from our academic tradition, writing interpretation on Geeta, Bhagvat and other scriptures and scripture-based writing of new books which have enriched the scriptures. Till the time printing machines were not available the books were written by hand and their copies were also prepared in the same way, so all our ancient literature was in handwritten form. In this Ved, Puran, Tantra, Jyotish, Ayurved, Vyakaran, karmakand, Vastu, Sangeet and other scriptures and Subhodhini, Anubhashya, Nibandh, Shodashgranth, Vaarta, Vachanamrut, Kirtan, Sevabhavna-Vidhi and other important books can be counted.
As per one estimate in last 100 years many truckloads of our ancient handwritten scriptures have been taken to national-international government and non government libraries, many precious scriptures are stolen, many scriptures like Sri Mahaprabhuji’s handwritten literature have been sold to wrong hands. Due to this for some scriptures we do get information from listings of national-international libraries. However, there are scores of personal and government libraries whose collections are not yet been listed and there seems to be no chance of any preparation of this list, here also huge number of literature written by our Mul Aacharyas like Sri Mahaprabhuji’s, Sri Gopinathji’s, Sri Gusainji’s and also other ancient Aacharyas are existing and nobody has any information about them. In this case there existence is actually like non existence! However, the question is what about the literature written by our elders with so much effort & purpose?
To keep the manuscripts safe is a very tedious work. Paper has limited life, after a few decades paper becomes time-worn and starts breaking by just turning them. Paper is favourite diet for pest. If for long time handwritten scriptures are not turned or if they are not kept in dry air or sunlight then due to dampness & stickiness in the ink pages get stuck and to separate them is not possible.
Experts of manuscripts & practitioners are well aware that these unaccounted manuscripts which are nidhi swarup valuables and due to lack of maintenance have become food for pests or have got destroyed in fire / floods. Once upon a time a very well-known Mumbai-based, Sri Gattulalji’s libraray’s almost all the priceless collection of ancient texts were destroyed due to carelessness of the caretakers is known to everyone. The position of the texts which were submitted at Government libraries is also not very good. In such scenario if earthquake, Tsunami, floods, meteor showers, fire or war happens then everything can get destroyed in one go. We have to do something to save this invaluable heritage received from our ancestors so these texts can have accessibility by all.
In addition to appropriate maintenance of the original handwritten scriptures, these texts need to be digitalized, which means to scan them and the images to be stored on optical-magnetic media and the backups should be placed on many different locations. This is the best and most approved methods available today. This is the way stock market, business firms, government and others protect their old-new data and documents. Once the manuscripts are digitalized then through the medium of internet these texts can be made available in any part of the world. It is to be noted that most of the world universities and manuscript libraries have started giving these facilities to researchers from long time now.
Sri Vallbhacharya Trust with the help of all the Pushtimargiya followers have decided to take up this very important task. For this work at Sri Vallabhacharya Vidyapeeth, manuscript library is in the process of construction. Also with the help of modern technology a well-equipped digital laboratory is constructed and the manuscript scanning activity is going on. Additionally to provide the information about this digitalized Granths, this website is developed. Whichever hand-written manuscripts are available with us and have been obtained from different libraries are been mentioned on this website. The images of all scanned Granths are not given. The Granth information along with Granth author, obtained from which library, Manuscript written by, total pages etc are provided on the website. To have more information about the scanned Granths users are requested to contact us via email or at Vidyapeeth address. Those who are inspired by seeing this activity and are inclined to preserve the ancient valuable manuscrips and in their publication, are humbly requested to contact us; we will be highly obliged!
