Connect GJRI entries with the main record for the GJRI

[wujastyk]

There are six manuscript entries for items in the GJRI that correctly link to the Institute's PP entry But four screens of entries of MS entries that do not.

These dangling GJRI entries need to be linked to the main PP entry for the Ganganath Jha Research Institute.

@ybronner @AmirSimantov

[ybronner]

You have hit upon a bigger issue. There are 2127 manuscripts that were imported from SKSEC, that is, before our current manuscript system was in place. Thus we need to go through each of them and enter the name of the site, institution, collection, and number (such as shelf number) in order to create the name automatically and, thereby, connect the manuscript to the relevant collection in the relevant institution. In the case of the manuscripts of GJRI, and there are several dozens of them, we would need to double check, at least for a sample of them, that this is the same Allahabad institution (I assume it is). But as noted, there are many more such cases. This is a big job, and we need to figure out the resources for it.

[wujastyk]

As a footnote to this issue, I have discovered that "GJRI" is an abbreviation introduced by David Pingree in volume A5 of his CESS.

[wujastyk]

DPSM = NCC's "Triv. cur." = "Department for the publication of Sanskrit manuscripts"

This is Biswas 0998, Annual report of the Department for the publication of Sanskrit manuscripts for the year... / by T. Ganapati Sastri. Trivandrum: Superintendent, Government Press, 1926-1940. 15 reports.

[ybronner]

@wujastyk Please clarify: is DPSM a collection, an accession number (as marked in this entity), or a catalog name, so that we can correct the data. I'm not sure I understood your comment. Thanks!

[wujastyk]

Hi, @ybronner, I think DPSM was originally an Institution. "Department" sounds like it was a sub-section of somthing bigger, but I don't know what the setup was. Maybe "Department of the Government Press"? But I'm really not sure. But it was a physical library, headed by T. Ganapati Sastri.

At some point in the twentieth century, all the DPSM MSS were transferred to the ORIML, so now they are a "collection" within the ORIML. In that respect, it's a similar situation to the India Office Library and Records (IOLR) and the British Museum Library that were both separate institutions but then merged into the British Library in 1982.

What I don't know is whether the ORIML gave all the DPSM manuscripts new accession numbers, and I also don't know whether they are included in the Alphabetical Index of the ORIML library, though I would expect that they are. I think the Alphabetical Index, 1957-2000, tries to be a new finding aid for everything in the library up to 2000.

I hope that this information helps to make decisions for PP.

(PS I well remember visiting the IOLR when it was a separate thing, in Blackfriars Road. Similarly, I worked in the British Museum library in 1974 and 1975, as an apprentice to Jerry Losty, when it was in the same building as the present BM; where Marx wrote Das Kapital :-)

[ybronner]

@wujastyk, good, this makes a lot of sense. I guess we should create a separate collection for the old DPSM under ORIML, connect the manuscripts to this new collection, and try to find out for each if we can get a new access number (we found at least some on the Alphabetical Index of the ORIML library. Does this sound right? Can you think of a good name for this collection other than DPSM?

[wujastyk]

Would Dept.Pub.Skt.MSS be too long?

Oh dear. Now I'm confused myself about whether DPSM refers to Biswas 0998 or Biswas 0999. Sorry!

I think only more comparison of MS numbers etc. will solve this.