The Wellcome Collection, one of the UK’s leading museums exploring the human experience, on Friday announced a “landmark” commitment to return what is believed to be the largest collection of Jain manuscripts outside South Asia.
The collection spans 15th-century illustrated manuscripts to unique texts from the 19th century, covering religion, literature, medicine and culture, in Prakrit and Sanskrit, Gujarati, Rajasthani and early Hindi scripts. Around 1,200 of the manuscripts were bought in 1919 from a single Jain temple in Pakistan Punjab; the temple no longer exists.
Manuscripts include a “rare and magnificently illustrated,” early 16th-century copy of an important Jain scripture called the ‘Kalpasutra’; and a slim, fragile and battered paper manuscript dated 1688-possibly the earliest surviving copy of the first medical treatise in early Hindi, Nainsukh’s ‘Vaidyamanotsav’ (‘A Celebration of Physicians’), 1592.
Under the agreement, the collection will initially be moved to the Dharmanath Network in Jain Studies at the University of Birmingham, which will open it to researchers and faith communities best placed to read, interpret and translate the content for a global audience.
