In the deemed university of Kanchipuram (Sri Chandrasekharendhra Saraswathi Viswa maha vidhyalaya,remember we even met its regitrar during our RK school meeting) has a department called Manuscripts dept. which works with the central govt. to digitize and catalogue all the palm leaves. They have an extensive collection and most of them are unpublished work. I have personally seen that dept. and thrlled, because what is available there is only a portion and was shocked to realize how much we would have lost.
My friend is working in this dept. Can try arranging a visit, if needed.
Will it be possible to visit the Manuscripts dept? I am in chennai during the navrathiri, pooja weekends. Please let me know, we can co-ordinate and visit the University and the department during this time.
Madan, I guess you will be interested in this visit and if anybody else is also interested, then why not organise a visit to the Manuscripts dept. Do let me know.
Cool, so lets get on with it... but the important point is not just visiting. Do we have an agenda to take the initiative forward? like, whats our goal? protecting these manuscripts? collecting lost manuscripts lying around in the pooja room of houses like my granma? research on privately held manuscripts and come out with a history perspective? what exactly do we want to do with these?
Sathish, could you talk to this person and let us know if the visit is possible and when?
1. Find areas of co-operating with the Dept. 2. Identify opportunities for publishing - previously unpublished works. 3. If private collections are available or identified, assist in Digitising & publishing the same.
I dont want to go beyond 3 action points as it will lead us from digressing from our original or primary goals.
Hi all, Please involve me in manuscript related activities. i am already working on a project related to digitizing manuscripts with National Mission For Manuscripts (A Central Govt sponsored one) i will try to be of some help to you all. I shall probably meet you all next time when you folks meet in bangalore/chennai.
Hi Gokul, It is not just a simple thing to explain in mail. i will be happy to meet you folks (when u fix a date) and explain it better. In a nutshell, it is about taking digital photographs of a palm leaf and storing it in a database. we use pattern matching to store characters to store the txt in palmleafs. we are planning to use a tool that controls a camera from windows PC. we also use some image annnotation and critical edit stuff for each and every palm leaf (manuscript) soon we will release this product in market. Guys if any of you have any manuscripts (or know any place where manuscripts are available) please let me know. i will be grateful to you.
In bhubaneswar iam also during my spare time actively involved manuscript project along with Bhubaneswar INTACH ICI division members at Bhubaneswar Musuem on vedic science , kalinga tamil relations and north dravidean tribes.