National Mission for Manuscripts: UPSC Daily Important topic | 11 July 2022

National Mission for Manuscripts

✓The National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) was launched in February 2003 by the Government of India with the mandate of documenting, conserving and disseminating the knowledge preserved in the manuscripts.

✓A manuscript is a handwritten composition on paper, bark, cloth, metal, palm leaf or any other material dating back at least seventy-five years that has significant scientific, historical or aesthetic value.

✓Lithographs and printed volumes are not manuscripts.

✓Manuscripts are distinct from historical records such as epigraphs on rocks, revenue records which provide direct information on events or processes in history.

✓One of the objectives of the mission is to publish rare and unpublished manuscripts so that the knowledge enshrined in them is spread to researchers, scholars and the general public at large.

✓It is under the Ministry of Culture.