At 104, BORI adds life to puranas and ancient manuscripts through online courses

Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) has Tuesday turned 104.

Keeping pace with the changing times and joining the bandwagon of online learning, the institute today offers several online courses on ancient scriptures and Indian history. Over the past year, the online learning community has been growing.

The century-old centre for Indological research and studies is one of its kind institutes in the world that specialises in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Indian regional languages, classical, Asian and European languages.

BORI has a rich collection of over 1.40 lakh books, of which over 8,600 are rare ones, along with 29,510 manuscripts. A majority of them have undergone digitisation and have been made available for free and given open access at the institute’s digital library.

Soon after the institute was established, the then provincial government transferred key manuscripts to BORI for preservation in 1918.

Among the many other prominent works undertaken here is the publication of the ‘Critical Edition of Mahabharata’, which was painstakingly done for over five decades after referring to 1,259 manuscripts. Commenced in 1919, this work comprising 18 Parvan, more than 89,000 verses and 19 volumes was released at the hands of India’s first president Dr S Radhakrishnan in 1966.

Today, an online course on the same topic is among the most sought after ones with a second batch scheduled later this month.

In June this year, BORI was bestowed with the 2019 Vaishakh Samman Prashasti Patra award at the hands of the Ministry of Culture and Buddhism International Buddhist Federation for its contributions towards conserving and spreading Buddhist studies.