On Some Markers Used in a Grantha Manuscript of the Ṛgveda Padapāṭha Belonging to the Cambridge University Library (Or.2366)

Abstract

This volume reflects and celebrates the work carried out in the frame of the project 'The intellectual and religious traditions of South Asia as seen through the Sanskrit manuscript collections of the University Library, Cambridge', 1 funded by a Standard Route research grant of the British Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project, which was officially launched in November 2011, had the duration of three years. I served as the Principal Investigator with the assistance of two research associates, Daniele Cuneo and Camillo A. Formigatti, who are the coeditors of this volume. The project's main goal was to create a complete electronic catalogue of the Sanskrit -and generally South Asian 2 -manuscripts held in the University Library (henceforth UL 3 ) of Cambridge and digitise about one-third of the collections, 4 linking the catalogue entries to the digital images (wherever these are available). 5 Most of the contributions stem from presentations given at two workshops organised in April 2013 6 and September 2014 7 at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Cambridge, while some (including my own) are independent contributions. However, all of them reflect the diverse efforts of the authors to engage -each in her or his often very personal way -with various aspects of the manuscript cultures of pre-modern South Asia. At the origin of this endeavour there is the shared awareness and recognition that the material features of the technology that allowed knowledge to be stored and circulated -|| 1 We used to call it the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project, which is how I will refer to it in the following pages. 2 Notably, the UL collections include substantial numbers of manuscripts in Prakrit, Tamil, Malayalam, and other medieval Indian languages. 3 Note that throughout the volume the acronym UL will refer to the Cambridge University Library. Similarly, shelf-marks starting with either Add. or Or. identify manuscripts kept in the Cambridge University Library, unless otherwise specified. 4 Due to the limited budget at our disposal, we could not aim at the complete digitisation of all the Sanskrit holdings in the UL. 5 The catalogue is now accessible online in the Sanskrit Manuscripts section of the Cambridge Digital Library: http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/sanskrit As is known, before the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project was launched, the only available print catalogue of the Cambridge collections was Cecil Bendall's remarkable 1883 Catalogue of the Buddhist Sanskrit Manuscripts in the University Library, Cambridge, which -as the title indicatesonly covers the Buddhist manuscripts acquired until that year.