PAGE FROM HISTORY: Ansari with gold leaf manuscripts of the Mughal period

In the din of chaotic traffic and bustling crowds on a busy commercial street shared, among others, by Patna's main market, General Post Office and the government hospital, the Khuda Baksh Oriental Public Library stands like an oasis of calm. Dappled green lawns border cool, quiet rooms where the scholarly pore over books and manuscripts in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Hindi and English. But it's not just the vast variety of the collection-its antiquity makes this library an internationally acclaimed research powerhouse for students of Islamic and Asian history.

Khuda Baksh Library is distinguished from others of its kind by the rare manuscripts on philosophy, society and the sciences preserved from the annals of medieval history. As its director, M. Ziauddin Ansari, explains, India has four major libraries that specialise in historic Islamic texts-Aligarh Muslim University's Maulana Azad Library, Salar Jung Museum's library in Hyderabad and Raza Library at Rampur in Uttar Pradesh apart from Khuda Baksh, which has the largest collection of original manuscripts-about 21,000. The oldest are more than 1,000 years old and include a richly illustrated botanical guide dating back to the 6th century.

More celebrated are the manuscripts of the Mughal period such as the Tarikh-e-Khandan-e-Timuriya (a history of the Timur dynasty) commissioned by Akbar, enlivened by 114 paintings. The oldest extant copy of the memoirs of Jahangir, the Jahangir Nama authenticated with the signature of King George V, holds pride of place, as does a unique copy of the Diwan-i-Hafiz Shirazi bearing autographs and personal writings of Humayun and Jahangir. Illustrated translations of the Hindu epics and the Bhagvad Gita in elegant calligraphy produced for the Mughal emperors stand as lasting proof of the universality of Indian culture.

Fittingly, the library holds regular seminars to highlight this cultural unity at a time when communal consciousness and hostility are becoming an unfortunate fact of Indian life (there was an attempt by a section of the local media early this year to insinuate suspicious links with a Pakistani trust, a controversy that subsided quickly). The library recently brought out a series of Khuda Baksh lectures in a book titled Secularism in India. Membership is open to anyone interested, though initially a six-month temporary membership is granted to see if the member has a genuine interest and can handle the books carefully. Its works, already available on microfilm, are being digitised to make them available on the Internet.

Its manuscripts apart, the library too has an interesting history. It was founded in 1891 by Khuda Baksh Khan, an eminent lawyer who went on to become chief justice of the then state of Hyderabad. He inherited about 1,400 rare manuscripts from his father Mohammed Baksh, also a lawyer, who had a passion for what was quaintly termed "Oriental studies", broadly covering the history, literature, philosophy and sciences of the East, particularly the Islamic diaspora. Khuda Baksh's efforts expanded the collection exponentially as did donations from other collectors of rare books. The honorary post that a Khuda Baksh family member occupies on the 12-member administrative board now lies empty as the case to decide on the present heir is in court. The library was termed an "institution of national importance" by an Act of Parliament in 1969, making it an autonomous body. Says Ansari: "It's a legacy of pride for the entire country." And the preservation effort makes the claim difficult to disbelieve. A dedicated laboratory and staff undertake the fumigation, deacidification and binding that keep the works from decay. The sheen of the gold leaf pages, the vibrancy of the colours-reds, greens, blues, browns-and the velvety black sweep of the calligraphy belie the antiquity of these texts, turning back, quite literally, the pages of history.

The library's guest book too gives a sense of history-all the well-known names of India's colonial and post-colonial past are here. Viceroys and governors-general aplenty: the Lords Elgin, Curzon, Hardinge, Irwin, Linlithgow, Wavell and Mountbatten grace its pages. Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Zakir Hussain and numerous Indian presidents came visiting and left in happy awe. Nobel laureates Rabindranath Tagore and C.V. Raman were here too, as was phycisist J.C.Bose. Raman's words make for the most fitting post-script to the Khuda Baksh story. Remarking that calling the library a subject of national pride was a "mere truism", he says, "I would rather like to see that pride translated into action and all support given to the efforts to maintain it." More than just a quotable quote, obviously.