Bhubaneswar: In a landmark initiative to safeguard and promote India’s medical heritage, the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS) under Ministry of Ayush joined hands with Berhampur University to digitise, catalogue, and publish rare Ayurvedic manuscripts and palm-leaf documents preserved at the South Odisha Cultural Study Centre (SOCSC).
The MoU signing ceremony was held at the Central Ayurveda Research Institute (CARI) here in the presence of Prof. Geetanjali Das, Vice-Chancellor of Berhampur University, Prof. (Vaidya) Rabinarayan Acharya, Director General, CCRAS, New Delhi and Prof. B.S. Prasad Former President, National Council for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM). The collaboration will be led by the National Institute of Indian Medical Heritage (NIIMH), Hyderabad, a peripheral unit of CCRAS.
Berhampur University houses a distinguished collection of over 2,000 palm-leaf manuscripts, much of which containing invaluable Ayurvedic knowledge and remains unpublished and inaccessible to the wider scientific community. Through this partnership, CCRAS-NIIMH will employ advanced digitization techniques to preserve these fragile documents for posterity.
Under this understanding, rare Ayurvedic books, periodicals, and manuscripts will be digitized and a detailed catalogue titled “Descriptive Catalogue of Ayurveda Manuscripts of SOCSC-BU, Odisha” will be prepared, featuring 44 distinct data fields to aid researchers. The catalogue will be hosted on the AMAR portal, enabling worldwide access to metadata of these ancient texts. Similarly, the selected manuscripts will undergo transcription, transliteration and translation into modern languages, integrating ancient wisdom into contemporary medical discourse.
On the occasion, Prof. Acharya emphasized that this initiative forms part of a national mission to document and validate India’s traditional knowledge systems. Prof. Das highlighted that the partnership not only safeguards the manuscripts’ physical integrity but also enhances the university’s stature as a global hub for cultural and medical heritage studies.
The MoU term initially spans two years. Both institutions have pledged adherence to strict confidentiality and intellectual property protocols, ensuring that the manuscripts remain under the custodianship of Berhampur University while responsibly sharing their knowledge with the public.
The programme was coordinated by Dr. M.M. Rao, Director, CARI Bhubaneswar; Dr. Sarada Ota, Assistant Director (Ayu.), CARI Bhubaneswar and Dr. Santosh Mane, Research Officer (Ay), NIIMH Hyderabad, in the presence of CARI and Berhampur University officials.
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