What have we lost by erasing our manuscript culture?

Social structures in the Indian context were always in a state of transit; laws were written but these dictums were constantly reinterpreted. How can we say that?

A manuscript culture meant that religious texts were always spurious and quite unstable; different manuscripts had different versions of the same text. These religious texts also had commentaries which the scribe would have made. There is ample documentation on how these manuscripts were written; the East India Company scholars (in the 18th C.) who were involved in translating these religious texts have examined the variants that existed and how the manuscripts differed from each other. They keep on referring to how they had to "collate" different manuscripts and how these hand written texts had errors and side notes; the job of these Orientalist scholars was to come up with a perfect version of the text and have it printed - without errors. This, in turn, refers to the process of how manuscripts were written; the implication is that the Brahmin pandits would have considered it a legitimate act to alter them and reinterpret them.