105-year-old Urdu copy of Ramcharitmanas found

A 105-year-old Urdu copy of Shri Ramcharitmanas has been found from a scrap market in New Delhi.

The copy of Shri Ramcharitmanas, printed in Urdu way back in 1910 at Lahore, was found in a pile of torn books three years ago in a scrap market at Hauz Khas in New Delhi and was bought only for Rs 600 by the Sankat Mochan temple priest family.

The priest family came across the Urdu copy while searching for an ancient manuscript of Sri Ramcharitmanas, which was stolen along with other precious articles related to Goswami Tulsidas from the Sankat Mochan temple at Tulsi Ghat.

When the manuscript was stolen, the former Sankat Mochan temple priest Veer Bhadra Mishra and his two sons along with other temple staff launched a countrywide hunt for it.

The Urdu version was written by Shiv Brat Lal, a native of Bhadohi district, in 1904 and was later printed at Lahore’s Half-Tone press in 1910.

The copy carries a prologue of 20 pages and has ‘four hand-drawn photographs’, in which one photograph not only carries the pictures of Lord Ram, Sita, Laxman and Hanuman but also of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh.