The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Workshop on advanced manuscriptology begins

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 11, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Workshop on advanced manuscriptology begins

Staff Reporter

50 participants attending the programme to be held till April 18

DECIPHERING THE PAST: Students peer over an old Oriyan language manuscript on palm leaf at the national workshop on advanced course in manuscriptology which opened in Chennai on Friday. — Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

CHENNAI: A national workshop on advanced course on manuscriptology and palaeography, jointly organised by the National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM), Department of Culture, Government of India, and the Department of Sanskrit, University of Madras, began on Friday.

Fifty participants, including 25 from outside Tamil Nadu, are attending the 40-day programme to be held till April 18.

On the anvil

The sessions will deal with manuscript survey, problems of documentation and collection from private repositories, origin and development of the Brahmi script, ancient Indian system of writing and materials, teaching and practice of the Grantha script, calligraphic study of manuscripts, calligraphy with reference to the Devanagari script, critical study of the `Agama Pramanya' of Yamunacharya, importance of Chandas and grammar for editing manuscripts, critical edition of music texts.

Besides scripts of Grantha, Nandi Nagara, Sharada, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada and Tamil, an introduction to the scripts of Arabic and Persian will also be conducted.

`Preserve manuscripts'

T.S. Sridhar, Special Commissioner, Archaeology, inaugurating the workshop, made a presentation on archaeology. He emphasised the importance of preserving manuscripts.

E. Sundaramurthy, former Vice-Chancellor, Tamil University, Thanjavur, said the country's potential could be best expressed through the preservation of manuscripts.

C.G. Rajendra Babu, Professor and Head of Department of Malayalam, R. Thandavan, Professor and Head of the Anna Centre for Public Affairs, D.K. Rana, Assistant Director, NMM, and Prof. Siniruddha Dash, Professor and Head of the Department of Sanskrit, University of Madras, also spoke.

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