Over the last two decades, the Muktabodha Indological Research Institute (MIRI) has created a vast online digital library, including many searchable e-texts, which is respected and utilized by scholars around the world. Over 2,600 manuscripts have been digitally preserved and made freely available to Indologists, scholars of religion, and practitioners worldwide through the MIRI online Digital Library. In this way, MIRI provides the global community with an invaluable resource for research and study.
The Digital Library includes three distinct collections:
- The Searchable E-text Library
- The Paper Transcripts of the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP)
- The Vedic Manuscript Collections of Gokarna
The Searchable E-text Library: This collection includes works of Śaiva literature from Kashmir and beyond, as well as texts of the Vīraśaiva, Pāñcarātra, Śrīvidyā, Śākta, and Nātha traditions. This collection also includes a growing selection of texts on Yoga.
The Paper Transcripts of the IFP: This collection includes over 2,000 mostly Śaiva Siddhānta texts from the French Institute of Pondicherry, designated by UNESCO as part of the ‘Memory of the World’ collection.
Vedic Manuscript Collections of Gokarna: This collection includes images of Vedic manuscripts from the Aśvalāyana, Baudhāyana, and Hiraṇyakeśin schools, including the private collections of the Joglekar, Kodlekere, and Samba Dikshita families from the temple town of Gokarna in Karnataka.
A more detailed description of each collection can be found on the Digital Library interface through the “Go To Library” tab above.
A Note on the Digital Library Interface
The Digital Library interface is currently being redesigned. While the redesign takes place, we are keeping the older interface online to avoid any interruption in accessing the collections. Thank you for your patience.
The Board of Directors gratefully acknowledges the enormous contributions of Harry Spier, architect and founding manager of the Muktabodha Digital Library. In 2003, Mr. Spier created the original Muktabodha Digital Library collection by digitizing the texts and writing the website software for 75 volumes of the Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies.
Mr. Spier was Muktabodha’s project leader in the collaboration between the Muktabodha Indological Research Institute, and the Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP; French Institute of Pondicherry) and École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO-French School of Asian Studies). The outcome of this collaboration was the online publication of the catalogue and texts of the paper transcripts of the IFP Shaiva Manuscripts collection, consisting of more than 2,000 liturgical, theological and philosophical texts, mostly from the Śaiva Siddhānta tradition. Mr. Spier managed the digitization of the texts, which comprise more than 200,000 pages, and wrote the search engine and catalog software. This collection was added to the Muktabodha Digital Library in 2007.
In 2008, he created a sophisticated search engine and catalogue for the searchable e-text collection of Tantric texts.
In 2014, he created the Gokarna collection from previously digitized photographs owned by the Joglekar, Kodlekere, and Samba Dixita families, consisting of 238 mostly Āpastamba and Baudāyana manuscripts.
Mr. Spier was also involved in the preparations for the printing of various Muktabodha publications, including Īśvara-pratyabijñā-kārikā of Utpaladeva by Dr. B.N. Pandit and Parāmārthasāra: The Essence of the Supreme Truth by Dr. Debabrata Sensharma.
Mr. Spier retired from Muktabodha in 2017.
