Bangalore: One of the most prestigious educational institutes of Britain, Cambridge University, has entered on a feature exercise in 'linguistic archaeology', which is anticipated to unearth greater knowledge of India's ancient intellectual and religious traditions, reports Times of India. The application will include completion of a comprehensive examination of the South Asian manuscript collection at the university's library, which contains the oldest dated and illustrated Sanskrit document in the world. The evaluated 2,000 manuscripts in Cambridge's collection are stated to reflect South Asian thinking on astronomy, grammar, law, philosophy, poetry and religion. Some of these are written on now-fragile birch bark and palm leaf. The head of the project will be Sanskrit specialists Dr Vincenzo Vergiani and Dr Eivind Kahrs. Dr. Vincenzo Vergiani said "In a world that seems increasingly small, every artefact documenting the history of ancient civilizations has become part of a global heritage to be carefully preserved and studied." "Among such artefacts, manuscripts occupy a distinctive place-they speak to us with the actual words of long-gone men and women, bringing their beliefs, ideas and sensibilities to life."He added A finding made in 1883 symbolizes treasures like a 10th-century Buddhist Sanskrit manuscript from India - the oldest dated and illustrated Sanskrit manuscript known anywhere. Some of the oldest holdings were discovered in Nepal. In 1870 the priceless cultural and historical artefacts were recovered from a disused temple, where they had survived largely by chance. Vergiani highlighted "The word Sanskrit means refined or perfected. From a very early stage, its speakers were obsessed with handing down their sacred texts intact." "Out of this developed an attention to how the language works. A grammatical tradition arose that produced, around the 4th century BC, the work of Panini, an amazing intellectual achievement and arguably the beginning of linguistics worldwide, which made the language stable and transmissible." He said Dr. Vergiani believes that it is this robustness that explains how the language became so prevalent in South Asia, a situation that has been likened to the spread of Latin across Europe.