PRAYAGRAJ, April 23 -- April 21, 2026, marked the 500th anniversary of the First Battle of Panipat (1526), a turning point in Indian history when Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi and laid the foundation of the Mughal empire. Half a millennium after the historical battle, a state-of-the-art Digital Repository housing rare manuscripts and archival records from the Mughal and British periods is set to open to the public this week at the Government Public Library in Prayagraj, offering a peek into those historical eras. Established in 1864, the 162-year-old library developed the hi-tech facility under the Smart City project at a cost of Rs 2.5 crore. Library officials claim the initiative is the first of its kind in the country. The digital repository will provide visitors and research scholars access to nearly 1212 invaluable works, some dating back to 800 to 1,000 years. According to Dr Gopal Mohan Shukla, librarian of the Government Public Library located in Chandrashekhar Azad Park, the facility brings together rare literary and historical treasures under one digital platform. "Even the National Library in Kolkata does not have such a facility," he said. Among the most prized manuscripts is the Shahnameh, the monumental Persian epic by poet Ferdowsi, written between 977 and 1010 CE. Spanning over 250 pages and comprising nearly 60,000 couplets, the text chronicles the ancient history of Iran. Other rare holdings include A Treatise on Mills (1795), Selected Letters of Tipu Sultan (1811), Institutes of Hindu Law (1796), and bound volumes of the Gazette of India and various provincial gazettes dating back to the 19th century. The digital window of the library also has 21 Arabic manuscripts including the Tarikh-Ibne-Qutaiba, and Tarikh Taimuri of 1232, 19 Persian Manuscripts, 36 Urdu manuscripts and 6 Sanskrit 'pandulipis' including the Ganesh Puran, Jyotish Shastra and The Kashmirian Atharva Veda Part I, 2 and 3. Some other rare works to be made public through the digital platform include Mahabrata (Persian) Manuscript, Abhigyan Shakuntalam by Kaildasa, etc. Dr Shukla said many of the manuscripts had deteriorated over time, making conservation a delicate and time-consuming process. Restoration and digitisation were carried out in collaboration with the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi. The conservation work followed the principle of minimum intervention and maximum preservation. Adhesive materials such as cello tape, used in earlier repairs, were carefully removed using organic solvents like acetone or xylene. "To restore flexibility to fragile sheets, conservators used ultra-fine 9 gsm Japanese tissue paper and gluten-free starch paste. All manuscripts and rare works have been digitised using German-made Book Eye scanners. Metadata software has also been integrated into the system, enabling precise keyword-based searches for researchers," he added. Once opened, the digital repository will offer the public a rare window into centuries-old literary, legal and historical documents, strengthening Prayagraj's position as a major centre of archival heritage and scholarly research, said the official....