A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Assam

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Anundoram Borooah Institute of Language, Art and Culture (ABILAC) proposed to compile and publish a consolidated Catalogue or Master Catalogue of Manuscripts which will include all the manuscripts found in Assam, irrespective of age, language, script and subject. Accordingly, then members of Sanskrit Studies cell of ABILAC worked out a plan and placed it in its sitting on 20 February, 1990. It proposed for surveying, classifying and cataloguing the manuscripts and then it advised the office for collection and preservation of the manuscripts under its care. The objectives of the proposed project were -

1. Survey, locate and identify the scattered manuscripts in Assam.

2. Prepare a catalogue of the manuscripts of Assam.

3. Maintain accurate and up-to-date information about the manuscripts preserved anywhere in Assam for researchers and other interested persons

4. Facilitate conservation and preservation of manuscripts by collection or digitization under the care and aegis of ABILAC.

5. Promote research and scholarship in the study of any branch of Assamology.

6. Set up a State Manuscript Library in the premises of ABILAC which will keep manuscripts collected and purchased by and donated to ABILAC.

7. Encourage documentation of those which could not be procured by any means.

The project was proposed to be carried out in several steps and the model of the work was decided to be Aufrecht's Catalogus Catalogorum.

It will not be out of context here to give an introduction to the Catalogus Catalogorum. "Considering the abundance of manuscripts scattered in different parts of the country in libraries and other institutions in India, the need to compile and protect this immense wealth was felt by scholars and manuscript aficionados across the country from the nineteenth century. There have been several earlier efforts to document information through scholars, kings, public and private libraries who made catalogues of their collection but a comprehensive catalogue remained to be done."

The pioneering project called Catalogus Catalogorum was started in 1819 by the German scholar Theodore Aufrecht as an attempt to create a master compilation of manuscript catalogues. An alphabetical register of Sanskrit manuscripts was compiled from reference works and other catalogues and was printed in three volumes in 1891, 1896 and 1903.