Science depends on verifiable facts, amongst other things. Manuscripts (pothi, books) and epigraphs are one of the few sources of facts about history, about Indian society, culture, arts, sciences before the modern era. What do we know about manuscript and epigraph culture of historic India? Well, you might be surprised:
- India is home to an estimated 30 million manuscripts, the world's largest set! Vast majority is in Sanskrit.
- Not even 0.1% of Indian manuscripts have been translated.
- When scholars such as Patrick Olivelle who is a prolific contemporary reader and translator of Sanskrit texts, have read more manuscripts of the same Sanskrit text, they report many material differences!
- We need critical editions and an acknowledgment of different conflicting versions of historic texts for honest Indology.
- Similarly, millions of epigraphs on copper plates, pillars, rocks, statues, reliefs and stone blocks exist at 1000s of Indian sites. Majority of these are in Sanskrit, rest in major languages like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Odiya, Marathi, etc.
- Again a tiny fraction read and properly translated.
- Colonial construction of Indian history and society is a mix of little good and lot of bad. It is largely a projection of oppressive Orientalism, geopolitical agenda that cherrypicked data in a few manuscripts and epigraphs with strange interpolations that fit a narrative.
- No robust science should rely on <0.1% data, when we already know that new data contradicts the data we believed was ok.
- Current and future generations of Indians and Indologists should read historic manuscripts and epigraphs for themselves, then apply the principles of science on what they have seen and read. Reviving Sanskrit and Prakrit languages would allow Indians to discover and learn from their own history.
