Catalogue of Manuscripts on Performing Arts (Music, Dance and Drama)

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About the Book Catalogue of Manuscripts on Performing Arts is a compiling Information of manuscripts on dance, music and drama. Such compilation reflects years of efforts in gathering information from the institutional libraries and private collections. This will not be just a copy of the music, dance, drama material in Aufrecht or Raghavan but it will update or rather fill the gap of existing knowledge in these fields.

About the Author Dr Kaushalya Gupta, (b. 1929) is former professor, Department of Sanskrit, Miranda House, University of Delhi. She has published a number of articles in leading journals. She has participated in many National and International conferences. Her doctoral thesis is on Women in Buddhism. In 2004 she was awarded Sanskrit Sewa Samman by Sanskrit Akademi. She was also contributed in the research of "Plants in Sanskrit Literature". Currently she is engaged in writing poetry in Hindi. Some of them Alok Sparsh, Man Batayan etc have been published.

Foreword Dr. Kaushalya Gupta is a Sanskrit scholar and former Professor of University of Delhi. The present catalogue of music, dance and drama appears to be the result of her years of patient compilation of available original manuscripts in various languages in different parts of the country and abroad.

Dr. Gupta has gathered information from the Govt. Oriental Library, Mysore, State Central Library-Hyderabad, Persian manuscripts in Aligarh University Library, Lucknow University Library, Govt. Oriental Library, Madras etc. She has also included the manuscripts of the Indian Office Library in London. These manuscripts are written in a wide range of scripts from Devanagari to Telugu, Grantha, Tamil, Marathi, Persian, etc.

This catalogue, as compiled by Dr. Kaushalya Gupta is going to update the already existing inventory and fill in the lacunae in the currently available catalogue of Aufrecht and Raghavan and facilitate new research. I do hope that this publication will be useful to specialists and researchers in all these three areas.

Preface There is almost an inexhaustible and unexplored treasure of manuscripts on Indian music and dance, in classical as well as in modern Indian languages, lying buried across the world. Only a very limited number of these have been published or made use of by some scholars, while doing research in Indian music or allied subjects, but most of them still wait to see the light of the day and be avaliable to those who want to consult them. These manuscripts are either in the collections of the institutional libraries or in private collections. Some individuals treasure these as antique, without realising the extent of damage they do by depriving the world to have glimpse of these and gather the knowledge therein.

While looking for some materials related to music and dance in the library of Sangeet Natak Aacademy, I came across some references and manuscripts on the subjects. Since, in many cases, I found that even the catalogues of the manuscript collections were not complied, in some cases where the catalogues were available, they were not in the alphabetical order, what to say to their being descriptive. Not all the manuscripts mentioned in the catalogues from the other countries of the world were avaliable (to this can be added the limitation of my knowledge of various scripts in which the titles were mentioned in the catalogues). It gave me an inspiration to take up the task of collecting information of the manuscripts pertaining to music, dance and dramaturgy.

From the Catalogus Catalogorum by Theodor Aufrecht. Wiesbaden, 1962 (first) published in 1896, prepared on the basis of the catalogues and lists of manuscripts in Sanskrit available to him at that time) there could have been more or less an exhaustive bibliography of works in Sanskrit language on the said subjects. A new volume of the Catalogus Catalogorum published by V. Raghavan, University of Madras was also very helpful in peparing the intended bibliography, which at present is based on the extracts from various catalogues. I am sure this publication will throw some new light to these existing ones.

Though it took a long time to accomplish the work, but I hope the result of my efforts would serve the purpose of the research scholars of Indian music, drama and dance. Since some of the titles are really very tantallizing, their critical study should yield fruitful result and original contribution in the field.

**Contents and Sample Pages**