The Oriental Research Institute, Mysuru houses more than 70,000 manuscripts and 45,000 rare printed works
| Photo Credit: M.A. SRIRAM
Karnataka is advancing its vision to become a national leader in digital heritage preservation with a proposal to create a unified Karnataka Digital Heritage Portal that will integrate manuscripts, rare printed works, archival records and other cultural resources on a single platform.
The initiative, led jointly by the Oriental Research Institute (ORI), Mysuru, and the Karnataka State Archives, aligns with the Union government’s Digital India Mission and the National Mission for Manuscripts. Officials said the portal will provide global access to the State’s cultural heritage and strengthen long-term conservation and research.
As a key component of the plan, ORI Mysuru is set to house the National Centre for the History of Indian Sciences, further strengthening its role as a premier knowledge repository. The Institute has already embarked on an ambitious programme to digitise its entire collection of palm leaf and paper manuscripts, while also establishing a dedicated website to make rare resources accessible to scholars worldwide.
To accelerate digitisation, ORI has entered into an MoU with the Mahabharata Pratishthana, Bengaluru, and is also partnering with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi. The Institute is upgrading its technology infrastructure to support AI-enabled tools for script recognition, metadata tagging, and digital restoration of damaged materials – an area where initial experiments have shown promising results, officials pointed out.
A short audio-visual presentation has already been produced to demonstrate ongoing work and showcase the transformative potential of the digital heritage initiative. Training programmes for digital archivists and expanded digitisation capacity are also part of the broader roadmap.
The ORI, Mysuru houses more than 70,000 manuscripts and 45,000 rare printed works, including the Arthashastra, Aryabhatiya, Natya Shastra and Sritattvanidhi. Digitisation projects worth over ₹2.15 crore, undertaken with the Bengaluru Mythic Society and Save Our Country Foundation, have enabled the conversion of a major share of its holdings into digital archives.
Report on digitisation
A consolidated report earlier submitted to the Union government highlighted ongoing projects to safeguard rare collections that reflect India’s intellectual legacy — from Ayurveda and astronomy to temple records and classical literature.
The report was presented at a workshop on ‘Digitisation of Manuscripts and Archival Records’ jointly organised by the Departments of Archives, Tourism and the University of Mysore at the Venkatappa Art Gallery here on Thursday.
Pointing to India’s rich knowledge traditions embedded in thousands of palm-leaf and paper manuscripts, the report noted that Karnataka holds a substantial share of this heritage, especially in Sanskrit and Kannada. “With ageing materials and natural decay posing challenges, institutions are combining traditional conservation with high-resolution scanning and artificial intelligence-based script recognition for long-term protection and wider access,” it stated.
The Karnataka State Archives, with repositories in Bengaluru and Mysuru, safeguards public records dating back to 1811, including palace correspondence, maps and photographs that trace the evolution of the princely State of Mysore into modern Karnataka. Conservation laboratories are actively engaged in fumigation, de-acidification and other treatments to extend the life of fragile documents, the report stated.
Published – December 04, 2025 09:18 pm IST
