26-May-2018: Gyetongba, a compendium in Tibetan script, is being restored at a Darjeeling monastery.

The Buddha said his teachings should be evaluated as rigorously as people would gold. Now, they can be read in gold. A trove of more than 600 pages of rare Tibetan manuscripts with his teachings written in gold letters has been restored at a 100-year-old monastery in Alubari in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district.

Restoration of the gold-inlaid manuscripts in two volumes at the Mak Dhog Monastery started earlier this year. The manuscripts contain the ancient Tibetan text called Gyetongba, which contains teachings of Buddhism. The manuscripts are in the Tibetan script Sambhota, named after its inventor.

While the Yolmawa Buddhist Association of India could restore the damage suffered by the monastery in the 2011 Sikkim Earthquake, external help was required to restore the manuscripts, which are centuries older than the monastery itself.

The restoration work is being done by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). Experts came across the manuscripts while assessing the damage caused by earthquake. The trust has provided over ₹10 lakh to INTACH for the project.

Experts who worked on the restoration said that while one volume contained 322 pages, the other had 296 pages. They fumigated using anti-fungal chemicals, stitched and used adhesives on the frayed pages.

Both the volumes are similar and a few pages are missing from the 296-page volume. Each volume contains 8,000 verses. They were brought to Darjeeling from Helambu in Nepal in the early 18th century. When the monastery was built in 1914 to foster peace, the manuscripts were kept here.

Gyetongba is as important to Tibetans as the Gita is to Hindus.

15-Jan-2018: INTACH to document heritage sites along Mahanadi river

Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) launched a programme for documentation of the tangible and intangible heritage sites along both sides of Mahanadi river.

Seven teams of culture enthusiasts will cover nearly 1000 kilometres on both side of the river Mahanadi under the project. The tangible and intangible heritage along the river will be documented and the important heritage structures will be photographed and video-graphed. It will be a road map for the conservation workers, historians, students and researchers.

While the tangible and intangible heritages along the course of Mahanadi in Chhattisgarh will be documented by the team of INTACH there, teams from Odisha INTACH will list and document the heritage along it in Odisha.

Civilisation thrived on the banks of the river and the teams will document them so that the community is benefitted. The teams will collect data, which will be documented after being scrutinized, in prescribed format.

Around 50 per cent of the total course of the river flows in the state of Odisha. The INTACH teams will cover around six to seven districts for the cultural mapping in the state. All the major settlements in the state have come up along Mahanadi and there are numerous tangible heritages like temples, palaces, forts dot it.

Moreover, intangible heritage like folklore, songs and dances, tribal art and craft have also thrived along the river.