The Bodleian Libraries are digitizing 100 manuscript works of Sanskrit and related South Asian manuscripts.

The Bodleian is proud to be the repository of some 8,700 Sanskrit manuscripts, the largest known collection outside the Indian subcontinent. From the first South Asian acquisitions gifted by Archbishop William Laud between 1635 and 1640, the manuscript collection expanded through donations in the 19th century (including the personal library of Horace Wilson, the first Boden Professor of Sanskrit), and a donation of over 6,000 manuscripts by the Prime Minister of Nepal, the Maharajah Sir Chandra Shum Shere, in 1909.

In 1927, the library’s Sanskrit manuscript collection was further enriched when the Indian Institute Library, which had been founded by the Boden Professor of Sanskrit, Sir Monier Monier-Williams, came under Bodleian management.

The collection spans approximately 1,000 years of the continent’s cultural heritage, and covers every branch of Sanskrit literature. It also includes a smaller number of manuscripts in Tamil, Prakrit, Marathi, Pali and other Indic languages.

This project will digitize a number of important works from the collection, including:

• A wonderfully illuminated copy of Pālakāpya’s Treatise on Elephants (MS. Ind. Inst. Sank. 2), written on Western paper between 1874 and 1878.
• A trilingual manuscript of the Mañjuśrīnāmasaṅgīti (MS. Asiat. Misc. d. 8).
• The oldest manual for the ordination of Buddhist nuns (MS. Sansk. c. 25 (R)).
• Kālidāsa’s Abhijñānaśakuntala with William Jones’ translation

It will also digitize items identified as particularly valuable for teaching and research, to support classroom work and private study for students and teachers alike.

The digitization of these manuscript works has been made possible through a benefaction from the late John P. Clay, an alumnus of the University of Oxford and founder and benefactor of the Clay Sanskrit Library (CSL). The CSL has prepared editions of over fifty works of Classical Sanskrit literature spanning two millennia, as part of its aim to bring great works of Sanskrit literature to a worldwide audience. These are available as digital editions as part of the Digital Clay Sanskrit Library (eCSL).

The project is planned to complete in October 2025.

Read more about the Bodleian’s collection of Sanskrit and South Asian Manuscripts.

Read more about the Clay Sanskrit Library.