The experiences and knowledge from our past are recorded in manuscripts which have been handed down to us over several thousand years. The Government of India, through the Department of Culture, took note of the importance of the vast tangible heritage of India and established the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) with the purpose of locating, documenting, preserving and disseminating the knowledge content of India’s manuscripts. In order to disseminate the knowledge content of manuscripts, the Mission has taken up several programmes such as lectures, seminars and workshops. The Mission publishes the proceedings of the above- said programmes under the following series: Samrakshika (lectures on conservation), Kritibodha (project of Advance Level Manuscriptology Workshop), Tattvabodha (lectures of eminent scholars on a particular subject), Samikshika (research-oriented papers as presented in the seminars) and Prakashika (unpublished manuscripts either in facsimile form or critically edited with annotation and translation). Further more, the Mission is also engaged in publishing catalogues of manuscripts available with various Institutions and Repositories which follow a common theme.

“Catalogue of Manuscripts on Performing Arts (Music, Dance and Drama)” is one of such important publications of the NMM which has been painstakingly prepared by Kaushalya Gupta. Catalogue of Manuscripts on Performing Arts is a compiling information of manuscripts on dance, music and drama. Such compilation reflects years of efforts in gathering information from the institutional libraries and private collections. This will not be just a copy of the music, dance, drama material in Aufrecht or Raghavan but it will update or rather fill the gap of existing knowledge in these fields.