The Indian Government was invited by the German Ministry of Culture to exhibit a collection of India’s finest manuscripts as an inaugural event to the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair, where India was the guest country. The exhibition, titled “The Word is Sacred, Sacred is the Word”, went up at the Museum Fur Angewandte Kunst (Museum For Applied Arts) in Frankfurt, on the 4th of September 2006 and ran till January 2007.
While Indian manuscripts are diverse in language, knowledge, material and craftsmanship, the focus of the exhibition was the importance of the manuscripts and indeed the written word itself in the diverse culture of the Indian subcontinent. To highlight this, colours and materials were chosen that reflected the warmth and texture of India, in contrast to the cool white of the museum architecture, creating a warm and sacred space, in turn setting the tone for experiencing the Indian Manuscript tradition.
