CCRAS-NIIMH collaborates with Sevadhi Museum to digitise medical manuscripts

The National Institute of Indian Medical Heritage (NIIMH), Hyderabad, under the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), Ministry of Ayush, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Sevadhi Museum and Indological Research Institute (SEMIRI), Kottayam, Kerala, to digitise medical manuscripts and prepare a detailed catalogue of the collection.

The partnership will preserve valuable records related to Ayurveda and other traditional knowledge systems while making them easier for researchers and scholars to access. SEMIRI, managed by the Kumaranalloor Ooranma Devaswom, houses more than 30,000 manuscripts, including temple records and texts linked to Kerala’s medical and intellectual traditions.

The collection includes manuscripts dealing with Ayurveda, therapeutic practices, medicinal substances, diagnostic concepts and other aspects of traditional medical knowledge. The initiative will create high-quality digital copies of fragile manuscripts, helping preserve them while reducing the need for frequent physical handling.

Vaidya Rabinarayan Acharya, director general at CCRAS, said preserving medical manuscripts is an important part of protecting India's intellectual heritage. He added that digitisation and systematic documentation would help keep these sources available for future research and scholarly study.

Digital catalogue for Ayurveda research

Along with digitisation, the project will develop a descriptive catalogue with title, author, subject, script, language, material, dimensions, folio information, condition and provenance, wherever such details are available. The catalogue will follow the format of the Ayush Manuscripts Advanced Repository, helping researchers identify manuscripts and locate relevant primary sources for further study.

The project is also aligned with the Gyan Bharatam mission and the government's wider efforts to preserve and digitally document India's manuscript heritage. Medical manuscripts form an important part of this heritage, offering insights into the development of traditional healthcare practices and scholarly knowledge.

On-site manuscript digitisation

A specialised team from CCRAS-NIIMH has started on-site digitisation of the manuscripts under the institute's collection, digitization and cataloguing of AYUSH manuscripts and rare books project. The resulting digital resources and catalogues could support researchers, historians of medicine and scholars working on Ayurveda and Indian knowledge systems.

Highlighting the importance of documenting, C S Unni, president of SEMIRI, and Goli Penchala Prasad, head of CCRAS-NIIMH, spoke about challenges and future priorities in manuscriptology.