THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO KNOW ABOUT MANUSCRIPTS

As time goes on, our world is passing through revolution in the field of technology. Nowadays we have various forms of sources to document our achievements and life stories in. But did the humans have any sources of documentation before modern civilization? Yes, they did. During earlier times, the humans were continuously contributing their knowledge, power and ideas to invent tools and sources in any way whatsoever so as to upgrade the human civilization.

 

Humans were known to be especially exceedingly advanced in intellectual activities during the ancient and medieval periods. In order to maintain records, they had used various sources such as stones, copperplates, birch bark, palm leaves, parchments and paper. One such source for documentation is manuscripts. The word ‘manuscript’ is derived from the Medieval Latin term ‘manuscriptum’ that means hand written documents. A manuscript is a handwritten composition on paper, bark, cloth, metal, palm leaf or any other material dating back at least seventy-five years that has significant scientific, historical or aesthetic value. These manuscripts are found in different of hundreds and thousands of languages. Manuscripts of modern period also refer to autographs, correspondences and type written materials. The manuscripts have a long history of its existence. According to the Chambers Dictionary, “Manuscript is a book or document written by hand before the invention of printing” (Allied Chambers (India) Limited, 2000). So, manuscripts include all types of early writing, which are not printed and published. In other words, hand writings of any kind whether on paper or any other material in contradiction to printed materials are called manuscripts.

 

These manuscripts are all preserved in their original forms in our National Museums and Manuscript libraries. Nowadays they can be also found in digital forms. These were usually written in order to store information about revenues, achievements of the king and his people, important events in history, any necessary knowledge, etc. inscriptions that are chiselled upon a hard material or scratched i.e. graffiti, as with a knife point in plaster or with a stylus on a waxed tablet (From the Roman Empire) or as in cuneiform writing, impressed with a pointed stylus in a flat tablet of unbaked clay. Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls, volumen in Latin or books known as codex (plural codices). Manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchments, on papyrus, and on paper. In Russia birch bark documents as old as from the eleventh century have survived, in India the Palm leaf manuscript, with a distinctive long rectangular shape, was used from ancient times until the nineteenth century, paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the fourteenth century, and by the late fifteenth century had largely replaced parchment for many purposes.

 

The oldest written manuscripts have been preserved by the perfect dryness of their Middle Eastern resting places, whether placed within sarcophagi in Egyptian tombs, or reused as mummy-wrappings, discarded in the middens of Oxyrhynchus or secreted for safe-keeping in jars and buried (Nag Hammadi library) or stored in dry caves (Dead Sea scrolls). Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on palm leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Greek library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum. The study of the writing, or "hand" in surviving manuscripts is termed palaeography. In the Western world, from the classical period through the early centuries of the Christian era, manuscripts were written without spaces between the words (scriptio continua), which makes them especially hard for the untrained to read.

 

The Library of Ashurbanipal is the world’s oldest known library and was found in the 7^th Century B.C for the royal contemplation of the Assyrian ruler, Ashurbanipal. It is located in Nineveh i.e. modern-day Iraq. It includes a trove of some 30,000 cuneiform tablets which are organised subject wise. Most of its titles were archival documents, religious incantations and scholarly texts, but it also housed several works of literature including the 4,000-year-old “Epic of Gilgamesh.” Being himself a book lover, Ashurbanipal had compiled much of his library by looting works from Babylonia and the other territories he had conquered. The archaeologists had later stumbled upon its ruins in the mid-19th century, and the majority of its contents are now kept in the British Museum in London. 

 

In conclusion, I would say that the manuscripts are an integral and invaluable part of the world’s documentary heritage. They capture our thoughts, achievements, experience and lessons learnt from history which are necessary for us and the future generations to learn about so as to increase knowledge and be more clear about how the human civilisation evolved and reached the present times.