Manuscripts - Database

The manuscipt collection of the French Institute of Pondicherry was started in 1955 under the auspices of its founder-director, the polymath Jean Filliozat, with a view to collecting all material relating to Saiva agamas, the scriptures of the Saiva religious tradition called the Saiva Siddhanta, which has flourished in South India since the 7th cent. A.D. The manuscripts were gathered from the private collections of priests and monasteries across South India (mainly Tamil Nadu, but also Karnataka and South Andhra Pradesh). When the manuscripts themselves could not be obtained, transcripts in Devanagari script were made. Such transcripts were also made of manuscripts held in other libraries.

The collection of the FIP now consists of approximately 8 600 palm-leaf codices (including 360 bundles of texts written on paper) and 11 44 transcripts of manuscripts on paper in Devanagari script. It is unique in that it is the largest collection of Saiddhantika manuscripts in the world.

Together with the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO, which houses a further 1600 predominantly Vaishnava manuscripts, and the National Mission for Manuscripts of the Indian Government, the IFP requested and received recognition for its Shaiva manuscripts as a UNESCO “Memory of the World” collection.

As cataloguing proceeds, the data is entered into an electronic database, which is to be integrated with digital images so far taken of the manuscripts in question. A sample of this integrated database has been release on a CD with the title Parampara.

The first major part of the database to be published will be a complete catalogue of the transcripts integrated with images, which should appear on the internet by the end of 2006. The cataloguing of this part of the collection is complete and, in large part thanks to the active interest of the Muktabodha Indological Research Insitute (MIRI), two thirds of the transcripts have been either scanned or digitally photographed.