AT Photo
Guwahati, May 1: On the occassion of the 127th death anniversary of ‘Bhaxar Oja’ Late Hemchandra Baruah, Jayanta Baruah, publisher of Hemkosh and chairman of Pratidin Media Network today (May 1) received the Guinness World Records certificate of ‘LARGEST BILINGUAL BRAILLE DICTIONARY’ from Rishi Nath,official adjudicator for Guinness World Records at the Birinchi Kumar Baruah (BKB) Auditorium, Gauhati University.
The certificate was received in august presence of Governor of Assam, Gulab Chand Kataria and several other noted personalities including the VC of Gauhati University, Professor Pratap Jyoti Handique, Pijush Hazarika, Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment Department, Dr. Bhartendu Pandey, Professor of Department of Sanskrit, Delhi University, Basanta Goswami, amongst other distinguished personalities, academicians, journalists, litterateurs, and socio-cultural organizational leaders. People came in large number to witness the historic event.
The dignitaries lauded the efforts of Jayanta Baruah, in the field of language and congratulated Hemkosh Prakashan in taking the Assamese Language to the world stage.
Jayanta Baruah thanked the entire team of Hemkosh’s braille dictionary. He expressed his gratitude towards Pijush Hazarika, Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment, also the Commissioner, Manager, and staff of Govt. Braille Press for extending their invaluable support. He also thanked the entire support staff who tirelessly worked for the dictionary and for the tabulation for Guinness World Records, including visually impaired proofreaders.
The world record holder, Hemkosh’s braille edition, is the ‘LARGEST BILINGUAL BRAILLE DICTIONARY’ with 90,640 words printed in than 21 volumes and 6 parts, across 10,279 pages weighing 80.800 Kgs. The braille edition is the adaption of Hemkosh’s 14th Edition’s regular dictionary.
The first Assamese language dictionary, ‘Hemkosh’, was compiled by Late Hemchandra Baruah in the last part of the 19th century, and was published four years later after his demise. The subsequent editions, of the dictionary were published by the next generations of his family.
Jayanta Baruah, in a bid to continue the ‘Hemkosh’ legacy, as the grandson of Late Hemchandra Baruah, conceptualised, and published the Braille edition of the dictionary.
This Braille version of Hemkosh would be the first full language dictionary in Braille, after Oxford. Jayanta Baruah has donated (free of cost), the dictionary copies to all the educational institutions for the visually impaired students, universities, state and central libraries, as well as the national library.
It is the first etymological dictionary of the Assamese language and is bilingual in nature, thus children can benefit in both English and Assamese languages.
