Google to digitize 800,000 books and manuscripts from India's Mysore University

Google, the world's leading Internet search engine, is going to digitize a collection of more than 800,000 books and manuscripts housed at the University of Mysore, in Karnataka, India. Among the digitized manuscripts will be India's first political treatise, the Arthasastra, written by Kautilya in the 4th century B.C.

by Siddique Islam

"Written in both papers and palm leaves, there are around 100,000 manuscripts in our library, some dating back to the eighth century. The effort is to restore and preserve this cultural heritage for effective dissemination of knowledge," said J. Shashidhara Prasad, vice-chancellor of the university, according to the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS).

"Many manuscripts on ayurveda, mathematics, medicine, science, astrology and economy including Arthasastra and several paper manuscripts of the Wodeyar dynasty of Mysore will be digitized first," the vice-chancellor added.

Prasad also said, the documents and books, which were written either in Sanskrit or Kannada, would be patented and printed after the digitization process has been completed.

"Depending upon the exclusivity of the materials, we will patent them before making them available on public domain," he said.

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