“National Institute of Prakrit studies and Research” at Sree Kshetra.

Our next destination was to the “National Institute of Prakrit studies and Research” at Sree Kshetra.

This is a Central Government funded Institution situated in about 10 acres of land with several buildings. 

Though the Director of the Institute Prof.B.S.Sanniah, was busy in a board meeting, he was kind enough to spare time with us and have detailed discussions. 

Then we were shown the Library of this Institute. This is a real treasure house for us since it contains hundreds of books written in Moola Prakrita and others like Sauraseni Prakrita. 

Then we were shown the Manuscripts section where about 50,000 Prakrita manuscripts are stored.

 

Most of the manuscripts are well preserved, but some of them are very old and in crumbling stages.

We have travelled all around Karnataka for several hundreds of kilometers gathering a lot of information and copies of manuscripts. All these speak hundreds of stories about our Tradition and Heritage.

Can this treasure of knowledge be used for the upliftment of our community people? Yes, certainly it can be used.  How?

After a lots of thought we have come to a conclusion that these can be used by our community people in many ways.  We are trying to patent these with the help of our Saurashtra Madhya Sabha.

Once these are patented then we will implement ways to benefit our community and our community weavers in particular. 

Then last but not the least, we will also try to establish a “National Institute of Saurashtra studies & Research”