Preservation and Digitisation of Manuscripts Belonging to 16th to 20th Century of Central Kerala (EAP1320)

Aims and objectives

Aim of this digitisation project is to collect, process and digitize approximately 16000 endangered documents of high research and cultural value. Sources of these collections are two families with renowned tradition of knowledge in ancient Kerala. First is the Irinjadappilly Mana, the ancestral home of Sangamagrama Madhava, the legendary mathematician of 14th century. Second is Kunnathur Padinjaredath Mana, known for their knowledge in Vasthu Sastra and Tantra. The project proposes to use the facilities of Manuscript Research and Preservation Centre at St. Joseph’s College, Thrissur. The work will be useful for researchers world-wide in Mathematics, Astronomy and History. 
 

Outcomes

Through our project titled “Preservation and digitisation of Manuscripts Belonging to 16th to 20th Century in central Kerala’, we have collected, processed and digitised 17002 endangered folios of high research and cultural value. Sources of these collections are mainly from two families with renowned tradition of knowledge in ancient Kerala and a personal collection. One is the Irinjadapilly Mana the ancestral home of Sangamagrama Madhava, the legendary Mathematician of the 14th century. Other is Kunnathur Padinjaredath Mana, known for their knowledge in Vasthu Sastra and Tantra. The project team has digitised 84 documents distributed in a total of 77 palm leaves documents and seven old books. In which approximately 13500 of them are palm leaf material and 3500 paper pages. The palm leaves belong to the period 1600 to 1910 AD. Notable outcomes are the recovery and digitisation of assumingly ‘lost’ ancient works like ‘Lagnaprakarana’ of renowned ancient scholars and a Palm leaf manuscript text of Rgveda. We could digitise rare palm leaf documents in the domains of Astronomy related mathematics, Ayurveda, Upanayana, Astrology, Commentaries etc. The project fostered professional standards in archival preservation, maintenance, organisation of the archive etc... The project team used the facilities of Manuscript Research and Preservation Centre at St. Joseph’s College, Thrissur, Kerala.

The records copied by this project have been catalogued as: