Murty Trust announces ₹75 million grant to promote Sanskrit and Prakrit

Murty Trust, the family foundation of Sudha Murty and Narayana Murthy, on Friday, announced a grant of ₹75 million to the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) to preserve and promote research on rare books and manuscripts in Sanskrit and Prakrit.

The grant covers the construction of the Murty Centre of Indic Studies, an 18,000 square feet heritage-style, academic and research building with a 200-seater classroom capacity; an auditorium to conduct lectures and an audio-visual studio to digitise ancient books and manuscripts, said the foundation in a press release.

“BORI is a 105-year-old institution and a key pillar of India’s cultural heritage. It has produced a plethora of intellectual research papers and books. I was mesmerised by the intellectual work of two books, ‘critical addition of Mahabharata’ and ‘Kane’s Dharmashastra’, both of which are very dear to my heart. As times have changed, the audience wants online classes to learn more about our culture and would like to interact with the staff. Hence, the Murty Trust has decided to support BORI with a new and modern building that will be dedicated to celebrating India’s cultural heritage,” said Sudha Murty.

According to Bhupal Patwardhan, chairman, executive board of BORI, “The Institute has 28,000 manuscripts and old books. To support these books the new building will provide a conservation laboratory. This is going to be a big leap for the Institute and its future. With this facility, the different subjects from Indic culture can be disseminated all over the world.”

The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), Pune, was founded in 1917 and has one of the largest collections of rare books and manuscripts spanning over 1,25,000 books and 28,000 manuscripts in several languages such as Sanskrit and Prakrit.