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ABOUT THE MANUSCRIPTS:HISTORY, PATRONAGE AND CONSTRUCTION
The manuscripts in the collections can be broadly, but not exclusively, organized under the categories: religious texts, translations, poetry, science and works of a historical nature. These areas of interest would generally be pursued in and around urban areas which facilitated the economic and commercial life of Punjab.
The patrons who generally commissioned manuscripts were the urban elite whose resources for information and interest were the highest. The scribes commissioned to undertake the commissions were generally either very specialized in their respective fields or mendicants affiliated with religious orders. For example, Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708), the 10th Sikh guru, established a university called the 'taksal' in Anandpur Sahib. The function of these taksal institutions was to translate and transliterate Sanskrit texts into the vernacular in the Gurmukhi script, thereby making them accessible to a mass audience. The ascetic Udasi and Nirmala Sikh orders were commissioned to complete these tasks. They had headquarters (boongas) in the big metropolises and various satellite locations (deras) across the countryside. For instance, there are texts that are authored by Udasis in Amritsar which indicates that the author lived and worked at their own dera. This semi-itinerant scribal tradition is evidenced across all religious denominations until the coming of the print culture in the middle of the nineteenth century.
The vast majority of the manuscripts catalogued are handwritten (several late-nineteenth-century examples have been printed using the lithograph process) and have used white or brown Indian (desī) paper as their base. The ink varies in colour, but it is very common to see most manuscripts written in black with rubrications (headings, subheadings and major sections) in red. The folios are bound together at the spine as are most modern books with, in most cases, a binding of cardboard. Many have been subsequently rebound in leather. Older manuscripts with the original binding are strung together at the spine using string.