Octogenarian from Jammu wants to donate rare Sanskrit manuscript to govt

Our Correspondent

Arjun Sharma

Jammu, September 9  

Passing through generations, a Sanskrit manuscript written on tree leaves is in possession of a retired doctor in Jammu city who is now trying to donate it to some genuine government agency for its preservation.

SP Padha, retired Head of the Department of Ophthalmology at Government Medical College Jammu, found the manuscript written on palm leaves in a wooden bucket in 1956 while cleaning his house.

He later found it to be a manuscript with complete Bhagwad Gita written on palm leaves.

“I was cleaning my house in 1956 when I stumbled upon several pieces on which something was written in Sanskrit. I went to my father who was a professor of Sanskrit. He told me that it is Bhagwad Gita,” said Padha.

The octogenarian lives in Trikuta Nagar locality here and wants to preserve the manuscript in a government library or archives.

“I clean it regularly and keep it wrapped in a piece of cloth at a dry place. However, at this age, I may not be able to keep it properly and wish to donate it to a government library or a department that can preserve it for future generations as this is something rare. I want this to go to such a place where it is preserved as the manuscript is a treasure of our culture and religion and I will not like it to be wasted,” said the retired doctor.

Talking about the age of the manuscript, Padha said that it is very difficult to tell the precise date when it was written. “Manuscripts used to be written on palm leaves and Bhoj Patras around thousand years ago. “We were a family of priests. I do not know if it was written by one of my forefathers or they got it from somewhere,” said Padha.

Unfortunately, one of the pages of the manuscript was missing when Padha found it. He later tried to recreate it by writing the ‘Shlokas’ of the missing page on a palm leaf.

“Although I knew which page was missing as I know Bhagwad Gita by heart, it could not be replicated as the original manuscript is a masterpiece,” he said.  

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