Bhubaneswar, June 22: Students from across the country will gather knowledge on manuscript preservation and paleography (the study of ancient writing) at a 21-day workshop that began at Utkal University today.

Organised by the National Mission for Manuscripts and the Sanskrit department of the varsity, the workshop aims at providing youngsters hands-on experience on ways to preserve ancient records. Around 15 experts in the field from various universities and research institutes will brief the students.

The basic level course will familiarise the students with local scripts prevalent in their area along with other ancient writings in Modi, Grantha, Brahmi and Tigalari scripts. The course would also cover other aspects like critically editing texts and their cataloguing.

"The youngsters would learn to decipher and transcribe texts written in ancient scripts. We aim at teaching scholars from a variety of disciplines, the skills we need to read documents from a specific time and place besides spreading awareness about the importance of the manuscripts and the necessity of their preservation," said N.C. Kar, the co-ordinator of the National Mission for Manuscripts.

Around 30 students from various educational institutions in Pondicherry, Delhi, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu are participating at the workshop, along with 15 students from Utkal.

Special focus will be given on local students on encoding and preserving ancient Odia scripts. "Odisha has the distinction of possessing manuscripts that have been authored a few centuries ago. If not preserved properly, these rare manuscripts are likely to perish," said Kar.

In the first four days of the workshop, the participants would be given theoretical awareness of the various types of scripts present in the country. They would be taught to analyse the art of reading handwriting. Thereafter, they would be given practical knowledge on employing various methods for preservation of the scripts along with decoding them.

The participants will also be trained on basic conservation and storage of manuscripts and use of information technology in manuscript preservation and research.

"Preservation of manuscripts is necessary for a nation as they contain crucial information. They will be taught about cleaning and laminating records using simple tools," said Kar.

The students will also be taught about publishing ancient documents after decoding it into a readable language. "It is very important that the documents are made available to the rest of the scholarly community as well as to the public. So, we will also try to make them accessible," said the co-ordinator of the workshop Prativa Manjari Rath.

The students are quite enthusiastic about the workshop.

"It is important to save the literary heritage of our country and we are looking forward to learn a number of innovative ways to preserve them," said Subrat Kumar, a student attending the workshop.