Project Goals and Results
The project aimed to make a major, but largely inaccessible and little-studied collection of Sanskrit manuscripts accessible again to the scholarly world, and to conduct focussed research on the collection.
The basic task of the gradual digitization and digital cataloguing of the Sanskrit manuscripts fell to Punjab University Library and Geumgang University, and was done in scholarly and technical collaboration, and coordination with ISTB, Vienna, where the main research component of the project was located.
The project research consists of three major aims:
1) The analysis and evaluation of the philosophical manuscripts of the collection (1,266 manuscripts), resulting in the establishment of a descriptive digital catalogue that follows international standards and highlights the importance of the individual manuscripts, combined with a related prosopographically-oriented data base that presents all information that can be extracted from the initial passages and colophons of the manuscripts.
2) A study of the history of the Collection
(a) in the wider context of the flourishing Sanskritic culture of pre-partition Lahore and the cultural and intellectual history of this city of celebrated multi-cultural learning, culture and intercultural exchange during the relevant period (ca. 1880-1947),
(b) with special emphasis on the history of its philosophical manuscripts.
3) In-depth philological work on some selected manuscripts, with an initial focus on a manuscript of the Nāṭyaśāstra, the foundational work on ancient Indian histrionics.
The results can be summarized as follows:
(1) Given the time frame and human resources allocated to the project, only part of the philosophical manuscripts could be catalogued in the above-described way. However, in addition the first volume of a handlist of Sanskrit manuscripts of the collection, comprising the traditional branches of learning Veda, Vedalakshana, Upanishad, Shrauta, Grhya, and Dharma, was compiled by Gi-pyo Choi, Sung-doo Ahn, Jae-kwan Shim, Do-su Paek, and Young-gil Park of Geumgang University.
Due to legal restrictions, both the catalogue database and handlist are currently not available publicly.
However, it has become possible to request surrogates of individual manuscripts of the collection using the Rare Book & Manuscript Use Request Form available at www.pulibrary.edu.pk/Manuform.pdf.
Research conducted in Parts (2a) and (2b) relied on the analyses and research on the data gathered in Part (1) and on extensive archival work in South Asia, especially in Lahore itself.
Young-Gil Park, of Geumgang University, published a monograph in Korean, entitled Hathayogayi Chullagkwa Suhaengron = Theory and Praxis of Haṭhayoga Based on the Haṭhayogapradīpikā and the Jyotsnā, in Mun Chongsir Series no. 6 (Seoul: CIR, 2013). For further details, see Project News.
For Part (3), Thomas Kintaert prepared the draft of a textual study of the fifth chapter of the Nāṭyaśāstra, which deals with the ritual preliminaries of a theatrical performance, on the basis of a comparative critical edition of this chapter utilizing the manuscript of the collection and a number of recently available manuscripts from Nepal.
In this way, the Woolner Project threw light on the little-explored Sanskritic culture of the Punjab and its treasures, which have been virtually inaccessible for more than half a century, with an emphasis on the Brahman cultural and philosophical component. It also contributed to our knowledge of the recent cultural history of the region exemplified by a specific institutional history and aspects of the cultural and intellectual history related to it.