Bhagavad Gita and Natyashastra Added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register

Manuscripts of the Bhagavad Gita and Bharata’s Natyashastra, preserved at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, have been added to the UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) Register for 2025. These are among the 74 new additions made this year to the prestigious Register.

• It is important to note that the inclusion refers to specific manuscripts, not merely the texts themselves, emphasizing the historical and material value of these particular documents.

About Natyashastra

• The Natyashastra, traditionally attributed to the sage Bharata, is an ancient Sanskrit treatise on performing arts.
• Spanning 36,000 verses, the work lays out a comprehensive system defining key components of dramatic performance — including natya (drama), abhinaya (expression), rasa (aesthetic experience), bhava (emotion), and sangita (music).
• The treatise is most celebrated for its elaboration of rasa, literally meaning “juice” or “essence”, which Bharata identifies as the core objective of any artistic performance.

About Bhagavad Gita

• The Bhagavad Gita, traditionally attributed to the sage Vyasa, is a 700-verse Sanskrit scripture embedded in the Bhishma Parva (Book 6) of the epic Mahabharata.
• Structured as a philosophical dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna, it takes place on the eve of the great war of the Mahabharata.
• According to UNESCO, the Gita synthesizes diverse strands of Indian thought — Vedic, Buddhist, Jain, and Charvaka — making it a central text in the continuous and cumulative Indian intellectual tradition.

About Memory of the World Programme

• UNESCO launched the Memory of the World Programme in 1992 to combat “collective amnesia” by encouraging the preservation and dissemination of valuable archival and library collections worldwide.
• The Memory of the World Register, initiated in 1997 and updated biennially, now contains 570 entries, including 13 from India, two of which are joint submissions.

Other Indian entries in the Register include:

• The Rig Veda (added in 2005)
• The collected works of Shaivite philosopher Abhinavagupta (added in 2023)
• The archives of the first Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Belgrade, 1961 (joint submission with Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, and Serbia – added in 2023)
• The archives of the Dutch East India Company (joint submission with Indonesia, Netherlands, South Africa, and Sri Lanka – added in 2003)

(Source: IE)