Aims and objectives
In the Keralan city of Thrissur, there is a collection of around 800 palm-leaf manuscripts kept at the Vadakke Madham Brahmaswam, a traditional Hindu institution devoted to the teaching of the Vedas. This collection belonged to the libraries of four adjacent “monasteries” (madham), reputedly founded by the famous philosopher Śaṅkara in the 8th century. (The current buildings themselves are renovations and date back to the 18th century.)
The main aim of EAP1304 was to preserve this collection and produce a complete listing of its contents. This project intended to lay the first stone of future preservation work on private manuscript collections in central Kerala, which are endangered by climatic events (such as flooding), poor maintenance and dispersion with inheritance.
Outcomes
The initial survey determined that there are precisely 748 bundles of palm-leaf manuscripts in the collection. All 748 bundles have now been fully digitised following EAP standards. 2533 texts in Sanskrit and Malayalam were identified within the bundles, many rare and unpublished. The bundles themselves date between 1700 and 1930, with the bulk of the collection dating to the first half of the 19th century. Their age has no bearing on the age of the texts they contain, which are considerably more ancient. EAP1304 confirmed the significance of this collection; it is certainly one of the richest in South India for specific fields such as Vedāntic philosophy, ritual for Samnyāsins (ascetics, monks) in the Kerala tradition and Vedic phonetics and recitation.
Three copies of digital material have been produced, in addition to the copy sent to the British Library: one is kept in Thrissur and two with EFEO (École Française d'Extrême-Orient). The primary copy of the digital material and survey (the descriptive catalogue) was formally handed to the Authorities of the Madham on 7 January, 2024, in the presence of project members, trustees, local manuscript owners and officials from the State Government of Kerala. This copy can be accessed now at the disposal of visitors and researchers in Thrissur. Access can also be granted by the EFEO at two of its sites, where the other copies of the digital material were deposited: at its headquarters in Paris (Maison de l’Asie) and at the EFEO Centre in Pondicherry.
The bundles themselves remain on the premises of the Vadakke Madham Brahmaswam. After having been cleaned (and inked, whenever necessary), the manuscripts were placed in large wooden cupboards in a newly built, fully climate-controlled archive room. A new continuous labelling (with initial B- and a four-digit number) allows easy location of the manuscripts. While the EAP grant covered costs relating to digitisation, surveying and training, the material’s preservation was supported by a joint contribution from EFEO, the University of Hamburg’s Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures and the Vadakke Madham Brahmaswam itself.
Work on the Thrissur collection led to the foundation of the Kerala Manuscript Preservation Centre (KMPC) in 2022 on the premises of the monastery. This archive has sufficient space to host other local endangered collections. With the help of senior Keralan academics (particularly Dr CM Neelakandhan, former Professor of Sanskrit, SSSU Kalady and SAS Sarma, from EFEO, Pondicherry) a network of manuscript owners is expecting to grow in the coming years. The two EAP projects conducted in Thrissur (EAP1039 and EAP1304) have contributed to building new capacities for manuscript preservation in the region and to increasing awareness about endangered artefacts among the general public.
The following documents were submitted as part of the project outputs:
