The Importance of Sanskrit Manuscripts in Understanding the History of Science

Chaired by Sudha Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, IIC-International Research Division.

India and Nepal hold the largest and most significant collections of Indian manuscripts, many offering unique insight into the history of mathematics, medicine, and other sciences. Using the discovery of a 1,000-year-old copy of the Compendium of Suśruta as a case study, this talk traces how the text changed between the ninth century and today, and works through the four core challenges of manuscript scholarship — discovery, access, interpretation, and dissemination — and how digital humanities tools are helping address them.

About the speaker: Dominik Wujastyk holds the Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity at the University of Alberta. His work spans Sanskrit manuscripts and Indian intellectual history, including traditions of debate, and in 2020 he received a four-year SSHRC Insight Grant for the Suśruta Project.