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Science
The University of Copenhagen has an invaluable collection of ancient Indian manuscripts. But all the people who knew how to read them have been let go.
Back in 2016, the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) shut down five small cultural and language programmes at its Faculty of Humanities: Finnish, Tibetology, Thai, Indonesian, and Indology.
Jacob Schmidt-Madsen had just been hired as a PhD student in Indology the year before that. And for years, he was allowed to continue his research in the field at UCPH, even though the programme had been discontinued. In recent years, his work has mostly focussed on winding down research activities in the discipline.
In December 2024, the media Videnskab.dk could report that the massive collection of ancient Indian manuscripts in Sanskrit — the classical ancient language — at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at UCPH is moulding and deteriorating.
UCPH owns an important collection of Sanskrit manuscripts that could have had immense research potential, but that are now going to waste
Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
According to Jacob Schmidt-Madsen however — the last UCPH employee within the field of indology — the tragedy is not just the traces of mould and decay found in some of the manuscripts.
The tragedy is the fact that there is no longer anyone at the university who has the skills to read them.
»The continued de-prioritization of the humanities has resulted in UCPH owning an important collection of Sanskrit manuscripts that could have had immense research potential, but that are now going to waste,« says Jacob Schmidt-Madsen. He adds:
»As an Indologist, I find it shocking that there is no investment in researching these manuscripts. Why do we even have them if we don’t intend to use them? I think it’s worth considering whether they should remain in Denmark at all if we aren’t planning to make good use of them.«
UCPH has recently partnered with the Royal Library in Copenhagen to find a way to restore and preserve the ancient manuscripts, according to Jacob Schmidt-Madsen. He believes the best solution would be to digitize them, giving access to them for researchers worldwide.
»The issue is that digitizing the manuscripts also requires experts in Sanskrit who know exactly how to handle and treat them. Unfortunately, the Royal Library does not have this expertise, but we hope that bringing someone in to do this will be prioritized,« says Jacob Schmidt-Madsen.
He points out that it is challenging to prevent decay in paper manuscripts as old and fragile as those at UCPH, which is why digitization is clearly the preferred option.
The ancient manuscript collection is one of the largest outside India, according to Jacob Schmidt-Madsen. It includes over 3,000 texts.
»The collection spans nearly all genres of Sanskrit literature: religious texts, philosophical works, grammar, plays, poetry, legal texts, mathematics, science, yoga, and tantric literature — anything you could imagine,« he says, adding that part of his work at UCPH consisted in mapping out the collection’s contents.
»We managed to map out a significant portion of it, but there are still many unknowns. All we can say right now is that it is a large and fascinating collection with immense research potential.«
It was a sad task knowing that there would be no one to take over after me. I was constantly shutting things down instead of building things up.
Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, Indologist
What makes this particular collection special, explains Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, is that it is often possible to decode exactly where many of the manuscripts originate.
»Several of the manuscripts can be traced back to specific historical individuals who lived in India in the 19th century. This allows us to create an intellectual historical narrative, something that is rarely achieved with Sanskrit manuscripts,« says Jacob Schmidt-Madsen. He adds:
»The Royal Library also holds another large collection of 1,500 Indian manuscripts. Combining the two collections would provide a strong foundation for indological research. Unfortunately, they have now abandoned this research.«
Sanskrit is an ancient Indian language but it is far from extinct, according to the former UCPH researcher.
»The language holds enormous cultural significance in India today, and Indian history plays a major role in contemporary Indian society. It is the only culture in the world that draws a direct cultural line from antiquity to the present. Without understanding its history, it is difficult to understand its present,« he explains.
The 2016 decision to close the programme has led to a significant loss of knowledge, according to Jacob Schmidt-Madsen.
»There is a Modern India and South Asian Studies programme, but it only deals with historical India to a limited extent,« he says.
Jacob Schmidt-Madsen worked first as a PhD student and then as a postdoc at UCPH until 2022. It was a unique experience being the last man standing, he recalls.
»It was a sad task knowing that there would be no one to take over after me. I was constantly shutting things down instead of building things up,« he says.
Today, he works in Berlin at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
»There are fortunately still places in the world that haven’t given up on history. I now continue my work on ancient Indian games and gaming cultures in Berlin, but I do wish I could have done it in Copenhagen.«