VARANASI, Feb. 22 -- Manuscripts related to literary works and the ancient Indian knowledge system preserved by the Nagari Pracharini Sabha are being digitised under the Gyan Bharatam Project. Vyomesh Shukla, President of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha, said the institution holds nearly 50,000 folios comprising around five lakh manuscript pages covering literature and traditional Indian knowledge systems. Over time, many of these handwritten documents have deteriorated. To ensure their preservation, the digitisation process has now commenced with support from the Centre under the Gyan Bharatam Project. Under the supervision of the Sabha's manuscript experts, restoration work on the old manuscripts is currently in progress, Shukla said, adding that all the folios will be digitised as part of the initiative. "These manuscripts will be used for research, study, editing, and publication with the help of technologies such as artificial intelligence, optical character recognition, and blockchain," he further stated. Nagari Pracharini Sabha is among the five independent institutions selected in the first phase of the Gyan Bharatam initiative, a national manuscript preservation campaign aimed at safeguarding the country's rich manuscript heritage. Shukla said that manuscripts of poems by Maithili Sharan Gupt and Shridhar Pathak, along with essays by Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi and Madhavrao Sapre, have been scanned as part of the digitisation drive. He added that over a span of 50 years, from 1893 to 1943, the Sabha undertook an extensive search for handwritten Hindi and Sanskrit texts, during which it discovered dozens of previously unknown poets as well as new works by established literary figures. The search was carried out under the supervision of eminent scholars such as Shyamsundar Das, Radhakrishnadas, Kartik Prasad, Krishna Baldev Verma, Shyam Bihari Mishra, Jagannath Das Ratnakar, Kashi Prasad Jayaswal, Chandradhar Sharma Guleri, Hiralal, Pitambar Dutt Badthwal, Daulatram Juyal, Shambhunarayan Choubey, Vasudevsharan Agarwal, and Vishwanath Prasad Mishra, a collective effort that significantly transformed the landscape of Hindi literature....