The Kenneth G. Zysk Indological Manuscript Collection at the University of Copenhagen is one of the largest of its kind outside India. It consists of more than 3000 manuscripts primarily written in Sanskrit in the 18th and 19th centuries. Together they cover the entire breadth of Sanskrit literature from scripture and philosophy over grammar and mathematics to poetry and mysticism. This includes a particularly rich selection of more than 300 manuscripts on the astral sciences, comprising mathematical astronomy, horoscopic astrology, and omenology and divination. Several of the texts are exceedingly rare and many others still await proper identification. Due to the precarious condition of the manuscripts and the lack of systematic cataloguing, their contents have mostly remained hidden until now.
The working group aims at identifying the astral manuscripts and manuscript fragments and producing a descriptive catalogue of their contents. It brings together scholars whose previous experience with the collection makes them uniquely qualified to undertake the work. Kenneth G. Zysk collected the manuscripts over a period of several years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Jacob Schmidt-Madsen produced a complete handlist of them as a postdoc in Copenhagen from 2019 to 2022, and Anuj Misra led two research projects at the former Centre for the Study of Indian Science (CSIS) where the collection is located.
The astral manuscripts in the Zysk Collection have been a priority for ASTRA from its very inception. Beyond the general interest for scholars working within the field of astral science, several texts on Indo-Persian astronomy and astrology and on pan-Asian dice oracles relate directly to ASTRA's core areas of research. And this, of course, without mentioning the many treasures that the working group hopes to uncover among the as yet unidentified manuscripts.