Going back to your roots every once in a while is a healthy exercise and Tamil Nadu school students would soon be getting a chance to do just that. To experience ancient scriptures, they could soon troop into their libraries and scout for books and learn about important rare palm leaf manuscripts. This is a first-of-its-kind initiative.
Chennai:
The Tamil Nadu Text Books Corporation has been entrusted with printing the books with details of these manuscripts. They would, in a few months, be distributed to all school and college libraries for students to access it. All these manuscripts have been digitised. The books will also contain QR code so that it could be easily referred to by the readers.
The ancient manuscripts include Uttiratcham shaped palm leaf manuscripts, “Kari-Naal”- smallest palm leaf manuscripts, that explains inauspicious days and “Sivalingam” shaped palm leaf manuscripts.
A senior official from the Education Department told DTNext that database of palm leaf manuscripts which are more than 400 years old will be used for printing. “The books will contain photographs of the manuscript and its explanation in both English and Tamil,” he added.
According to the official, even the “Tholkappiyam” leaf manuscript, which explains Tholkappiyam literature with Nachinarkiniyar and contains minute letters, will be part of books.
The official added that during the first phase of printing, about one lakh books will be distributed. “Gradually, old paper manuscripts will also be printed during the second phase,” he said. “The books will have 100 pages containing important and interesting information about palm leaf manuscripts,” he added.
He also pointed out that the manuscripts were digitized to 400 to 600 dpi or pixel resolution and converted to PDF format, which is readily available in government oriental manuscripts library and research centre situated in Chennai.
At present, the research centre houses 50,180 invaluable palm leaf manuscripts, 22,134 paper manuscripts and 26,556 reference books in various languages such as Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Urdu, Arabic, Persian covering subjects like Mathematics, Astronomy, Siddha, Ayurveda, Unani, Veda, Agama, Architecture, Music, Sculpture among others.