VARANASI, INDIA, November 22, 2021 (Chetan Pandey): HPI Note: following is a summary of a report from Chetan on various digitization projects he is engaged with in library around India. He has posted all the material on the Internet Archive site where is freely available to anyone. He reports: “We discovered an unknown library in Mumukshu Bhawan, Varanasi – courtesy of Jagadanand Jha ji, Chief Librarian Uttar Pradesh Sanskrit Sansthan of Lucknow. Permission was granted very easily but when we started working at the library with 3 cabinets of rare books and many manuscripts – my staff discovered there was another library – supposed to be only for Monastics and locked for as long as anyone could remember. The management was most kind in breaking the locks for us and we discovered 10 cabinets and 2 boxes of books with some manuscripts. Most books were pre-1950s. Our experience at Mumukshu yet again proves my Thesis – how our textual heritage is in unclaimed or abandoned mode. In Mumukshu – minus Gita Press and Anand Ashram books – at least 70% of texts are unique and unknown items which no one can find in any bookstore or even a catalog of a Library.”
The 2500 books that scanned in the last year can be seen below:
https://archive.org/details/@mumukshu_bhawan?and[]=subject%3A%22eGangotri-35%22
Several other digitized collections are available here:
https://archive.org/details/@jangamwadi
https://archive.org/details/@veda_nidhi
https://archive.org/details/@egangotri_manuscript_space?&and[]=subject%3A%22eGangotri-35%22
https://archive.org/details/@kashmirresearchinstitute?and[]=subject%3A%22eGangotri-35%22
https://archive.org/details/@kashmirresearchinstitute?query=lahore&and[]=subject%3A%22eGangotri-35%22
https://egangotri.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/2021-10-30-185406nmm_order-1-1.pdf
https://lucknowdigitallibrary.com/
http://nmm.sanskritdictionary.com/