The eGangotri Project is the only one of its kind in the entire sub-continent a textual archaeology of sorts where Lost Forgotten and Rare Books are not only digitized but made available freely over a No Rights Reserved License to everyone at http://www.archive.org without conditions.

Founded by Shri Chetan Pandey, a Programmer by profession, an IT Graduate from the United States, up until recently based in Singapore, who by sheer self-study unaided by any Mentor did two Master's in Sanskrit Language.

In Singapore away from his Sole Burning Passion in Life - the Sanskrit Language and Reading Material and the Great Teachings of Kashmir Shaivism School of Hinduism, he stumbled upon an Idea that why not get Original Out of Print and Rare Texts digitized and dumped online. Uncountable Scholars, aficionados and Academics shared the same fate as him that their geographical distance meant there learning pursuits won't just happen.

Starting with digitizing his own books with the help of his Uncle and wanting to do something much bigger he contacted his Guru Prof Navjivan Rastogi from Lucknow - the foremost Scholar of Kashmir Shaivism in the World today and disciple of the Late Prof K.C. Pandey, one of the first pioneers along with Gopinath Kaviraj who ventured into the unknown territory of the little-known Shaiva Religion of Kashmir. Prof Rastogi immediately saw the huge value in this Proposition - digitizing his entire Library of more than 6 decades of eclectic collecting.

Chetan started with one local youth scanning and dumping Prof. Rastogi's out of print, copyright expired texts online. Top Scholars from all over the Sanskrit Academia became his friends. Scholars from obscure Universities started writing to him seeking rare texts. He has been told that there are PhDs people were only able to accomplish because of a huge amount of previously hidden books suddenly materialized on the Scene.

He started distributing his Data for free - unconditionally as he prefers saying - at Sanskrit and Dharma Gatherings - and received multiple scholar's humongous digital collections in exchanges - which allowed him to have a digital eBook Collection of 2.5 Lakh PDFs to date. Chetan offers all this to any person who cares to write to him and will send a 6 TB Hard Drive to his Address - no questions asked. Scholars who write to him seeking a few texts - he forces them to take all or None and makes sure that every major Center of Indology worldwide has one Person with his Data so that that area can be served fully with Information.

Later when Fujitsu introduced its Scan Snap SV-600 Touchless Scanner and brought cheap and affordable Non-Tactile Scanners to a World still dominated by machines costing as much as 15,000 USD, it was just the right time to transition into the World of Manuscripts which hold rarer albeit less Mass Appeal promises.

Since Chetan's focus was Kashmir and the Shaiva Gift of that Land, Maharaja Karan Singh's Private Collection of around 6000 Manuscripts in Jammu - second only to the Oriental Research Library, Srinagar's Collection which has around double that number seemed an excellent Starting Point. Despite silly initial pessimism from Scholars, getting permission and access to scan was trivial. The Library started by Maharaja Ranbir Singh - the First Hindu Maharaja after centuries of Foreign Dominion - and in the Words of Stein the famous European Sanskritist and Cataloger of the Library, Dharmic Learning had withered in the Valley but got revived and the Library is the Living Testimony to the Maharaja's Love of Learning. Three years of scanning already in the Library Chetan has made three thousand plus priceless texts available online giving Scholars a Direct Access to Original Copies of Manuscripts - crucial for making Critical Editions - a luxury hitherto unknown owing to Logistics in the Past and Apathy in Current Times.

These Set of Texts are viewable here:

https://archive.org/details/@dharmarthatrustjk
https://archive.org/details/@dharmarthatrustjk-2

Chetan got more opportunity to serve Sanskrit when the famous Srinagar Collector Mansoor Daikoo who has a deep devotion to books and has accumulated 1 Lakh+ texts, opened his doors for digitizing his Printed Collection only for a Monthly Fee. This Library which also has 3500 Sharada manuscripts and 16,000 Persian and Arabic Titles - currently all out of bound due to the owner willing to part with Print Only Texts - though more represented by Indo-Islamic Theme it’s not insignificant Urdu/Persian Books on Hinduism and it’s not insignificant Sanskrit Collection is all getting digitized. This Collection is viewable here:

https://archive.org/details/@kashmirresearchinstitute

Other Links are viewable below:

http://egangotri.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/eGangotrigranthanaam/
https://github.com/eGangotri/
https://twitter.com/eGangotri
https://instagram.com/egangotritrust
https://archive.org/details/@dharmarthatrustjk
https://archive.org/details/@dharmarthatrustjk-2
https://archive.org/details/@ishwar_ashram_trust
https://archive.org/details/@indologicalbooks
https://archive.org/details/@navalkishorepress
https://archive.org/details/@urducollectionofprofshahidamin
https://archive.org/details/@kashmirresearchinstitute
https://archive.org/details/@upss_manuscripts
https://archive.org/details/@rashtriya_skt_sansthan_jammu

Currently, eGangotri Trust has 4 Digitization Centers in the Country with plans to digitize in Comilla, Bangladesh and Mysore/Punjab. The Trust’s efforts are entirely sustained by Chetan's Personal Salary which is meager given his scope to get everything in Nepal and India online. Chetan needs 12 Lakh Rs/annum to sustain his current Scope. More amount of money will translate into more Critical Collections scanned and dumped online, preserved permanently for Posterity.

Here is the Link for Donation:

https://www.paypal.me/egangotritrust

My hope and Prayer is that everyone interested in preserving ancient cultural heritage of the world will be interested in supporting my dear friend Chetan Pandey and his yeoman service project “EGangotri”.

Thank you,

Pramod Kumar Buravalli