Manuscripts

Tessitori's interest in old manuscripts began in Florence, where he could study the codes of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, some of which were valuable sources for his research. During his stay in India between 1914 and 1919 he bought a more then 200 manuscripts written on very thin rectangular sheets of paper. Most of them came from Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, some originated from other parts of Rajasthan, including Pālī, Śivaganj and Nāgor. Today the entire collection, called Fondo Tessitori, is held at the «Vincenzo Joppi» Municipal Library in Udine as a donation from the Tessitori family acquired in 1923. The languages in the manuscripts form a comprehensive and rare spectrum of ancient Indian literature from Sanskrit to Prakrit in its various forms, to Bhāṣā idioms, particularly Marwari and Gujarati. In the file Carte di Gigi, now kept in Reana del Rojale, the manuscripts are divided into ten sections.

• Twenty-five manuscripts in Prakrit identified by Tessitori
• Fifty manuscripts in Bhāṣā identified by Tessitori
• Twenty-seven mixed manuscripts mostly unidentified
• Six manuscripts in book form with an illuminated codex in Sanskrit identified by Tessitori
• One manuscript in Bhāṣā identified by Tessitori
• Eight manuscritps in book form in Bhāṣā identified by Tessitori
• One manuscript in book form in Sanskrit and in Bhāṣā identified by Tessitori
• Nineteen mixed manuscripts unidentified
• Twenty-one manuscripts in Sanskrit identified by Tessitori
• Sixty-five mixed manuscripts most unidentified