Preserving the Timeless Wisdom of India’s Scriptural Heritage: A Resource for All Humanity

The Muktabodha Indological Research Institute has a singular mission: To preserve endangered texts from the spiritual and philosophical traditions of classical India and make them freely accessible for study and scholarship worldwide. These are sublime works, rooted in human experience, that speak about the nature of reality, the power of the mind, the transformation of human consciousness and the interconnectedness of all life. We view these texts as a timeless resource for humanity. Muktabodha is an initiative of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, the spiritual head of the Siddha Yoga Path. The Institute seeks to promote an enlightened future by ensuring that the profound wisdom of India’s traditional knowledge systems is made accessible to the world.

HISTORY

The Indian subcontinent holds a vast literature grounded in the experiences of its sages, pandits and yogis. However, much of this traditional wisdom is in danger of falling into obscurity or, even worse, being lost to the world forever. From a material standpoint, we are in a race against time due to the degradation of ancient and fragile palm-leaf and paper manuscripts. But our ambition is larger than the preservation of historical documents. In doing so, we seek to protect the profound knowledge that these texts reveal.

Since its founding in 1997, the Muktabodha Institute has employed digital information technologies to preserve the unique genius of diverse schools of Indian philosophy and practice, and make it available to scholars everywhere. The Institute is incorporated as a not-for-profit educational foundation in the United States and as a registered charitable trust in India.

DIGITAL LIBRARY

The goal of the Muktabodha Digital Library is to preserve rare Sanskrit manuscripts and make them freely accessible, in multiple digital formats, for study worldwide. Currently, the library archives contain more than 3,000 digital texts representing diverse philosophical streams, including one of the world’s most important collections of manuscripts from the non-dual Śaivite traditions of Kashmir. Other tantric traditions are represented as well, including Kaula Trika, Viraśaiva, Śrīvidyā, Śākta and Natha Yoga. The Digital Library collections also include a large number of South Indian Śaivasiddhānta texts from the world-renowned archives of the French Institute of Pondicherry, India, as well as Vaishnavite Pāñcarātra manuscripts. In addition, we have digitized rare Vedic texts from the private collections of families in Gokarna, Western Maharashtra, India. These collections include works from the Aśvalāyana school of Ṛgveda and from the Baudhāyana and Hiraṇyakeśin schools of the Taittirīya branch of Kṛṣṇayajurveda.

To aid scholars in creating critical editions of Indological texts, several hundred manuscripts in the library have been transcribed into searchable e-texts. This meticulous work is undertaken by Muktabodha’s staff in Varanasi, India who are trained in the various scripts in which these ancient Sanskrit manuscripts were written. The availability of e-texts, coupled with the Digital Library’s sophisticated search engine, gives scholars and students the ability to easily search for specific words or phrases within individual manuscripts or across multiple texts, thereby greatly facilitating the pace of research. Few digital archives provide such resources, and the Muktabodha e-text collection in particular is highly valued by Indological researchers around the world. Work in progress is aimed at enhancing long-term protection of the Muktabodha collections in collaboration with Libnova, one of the world’s leading developers of digital preservation platforms.

TRANSLATION SERIES

Digital preservation is only a first step. Equally important is that the knowledge contained in these ancient manuscripts becomes more widely available to the world. With that goal in mind, Muktabodha launched the Translation Series initiative in 2022 to sponsor the publication of English translations of key texts from the Muktabodha collection of Kashmirian Saivite manuscripts, many of which have never been translated before. The Series will serve a broad range of scholars and practitioners interested in the religious and philosophical traditions of Kashmir, and, at the same time, provide non-specialists with access to the deep wisdom found in these treasures. This is because the translations in this Series will be both academically rigorous and written in a style that will be accessible to a general audience. The Series will be published by the State University of New York Press, a highly respected academic publishing house with a long tradition of offering outstanding titles in Indian philosophy.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The work of the Muktabodha Institute is carried out by an international team of volunteers and a small paid staff in our office in Varanasi, India where the manuscripts are digitized.

We warmly invite you to become a supporter of this vital work. You may wish to sponsor the publication of one of the volumes of the new Translation Series, support ongoing operations in India and the growth of the Digital Library collections, or contribute to our Endowment Fund for Long-Term Sustainability.

We would be pleased to speak with you to share specific information about the ways in which you can be involved. Please visit our website at https://muktabodha.org or email us at info@muktabodha.org for more information.