It gives me great pleasure to write a foreword to this Descriptive Catalogue of Advaita and Dvaita works. The catalogue is our tribute to the dedication of the scholars of yesteryears for the better understanding of Vedantic Philosophy in the manuscript holdings of the Academy. It is published for the benefit of serious students of Philosophy and Sanskrit.
The Academy left no stone unturned in exploring for and collecting rare and valuable palm leaf manuscripts with the objective of studying the writings by erudite pandits of long ago. The objective of the Academy is to share the knowledge and the manuscripts with scholars of today studying in the relevant disciplines. The volume has two parts. Part-A consists of a table with fourteen columns giving the title and author of the work both in English and Sanskrit along with other details. The codes used are elaborated elsewhere in the book.
Part-B consists of the beginning, the ending and the colophon as they appear in each of the texts referred to in Part-A, in alphabetical order. The information in these pages will, we hope, prove useful to many students and research workers.
We appreciate the role played by Vidvan. H.S. Hanumantha Rao, Vid. S. Narayana and his colleagues in bringing out this book. The Academy is also deeply thankful to the Department of National Archives, Government of India, for their financial support.
Millions and millions of manuscripts, the cultural repositories of India were destroyed by the foreign invaders with an intention of putting an end to our culture. But Indian culture belonging to a hoary past and deep-rooted in Indian minds could not be put an end to by these invaders. Indians, who valued the invaluable knowledge base, they possessed and protected it from the onslaughts of these foreign invaders even sacrificing their own lives. That is the reason why we are still left with innumerable number of manuscripts all over India in the institutional and individual holdings.
After the advent of the Britishers, who at least knew the value of this invaluable treasure trove, many manuscripts were taken away from India and safely deposited in distinguished European libraries the copies of which can be obtained even today by paying the prescribed fee. We should not grudge paying this fee because they have meticulously preserved this valuable treasure.
Now, the Government of India is seriously involved in protecting the remaining manuscripts in various parts of India, which amounts to millions. Various institutions in India have collected good number of palm-leaf and other manuscripts written on different media and are trying to preserve them systematically using all modern scientific methods. Of course, the Department of Culture, Ministry of Human Resource Development, is helping such ventures.
There is no point in merely preserving this treasure trove of knowledge unless we know what is available in them. It is very much necessary to decipher the information available in them and classify the same. With this intention, efforts were on after the advent of the European scholars in India, to prepare Catlogus Catlogorum and Descriptive Catalogues of the Manuscripts which were available in manuscript libraries.
Academy of Sanskrit Research, known for the bridge building of the past and the present has collected more than 10,000 Palm-leaf manuscripts and preserving the same with meticulous care for posterity. It has also undertaken the task of preparing the descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts to help scholars and seekers of knowledge to identify the required information. So far, it has published two descriptive catalogues of Sanskrit Vedanta Texts, Dravida Vedanta available in the manuscript library of the Academy with the financial assistance graciously provided by the Department of Culture, MHRD, Government of India.
The present effort, viz. Preparation of Descriptive Catalogues of the works on Dvaita and Advaita works available in the Academy's library is also financially assisted by the Department of Culture without which these volumes could not have come into light. My special thanks to the National Archives which comes under the Department of Culture, Ministry of Human Resource Development, for this kind gesture. I am also happy to place on record the dedicated efforts of Vidwan H.S. Hanumantha Rao, Senior Research Assistant, in preparing this volume. Now, it is placed in the hands of research scholars and seekers of knowledge.
The Academy of Sanskrit Research, established in Melkote, which is known as the holy Badarikashram of the South, for the intensive study and research in the field of Visistadvaita and its comparative study with other systems of thought, has taken up the preservation of our cultural heritage to the posterity as one of its prime objectives. Accordingly, the Academy is putting forth its sincere efforts to collect the old palm-leaf and paper manuscripts which are scattered all over the country, which need preservation. With this goal in view, the Academy is constantly improving its collection of manuscripts for the last six to seven years and now the number of manuscripts so collected has risen to a considerably large number of 10,500 works.
Though the Academy is interested in indepth study of the Visistadvaita philosophy, it has spared no efforts to collect manuscripts belonging to other systems of Philosophy like the Dvaita and the Advaita.
The philosophy of Advaita is also referred to as the Acharya Shankara's School of Philosophy, and Dvaita is referred to as the Acharya Madhva's School of Philosophy, as they tried their best to propagate their preachings in India for the benefit of all.
The volume of the Descriptive Catalogue gives detailed descriptions of the manuscripts on Advaita and Dvaita available in the Manuscript library of the Academy.
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