The Manuscripts
With respect to its branch of research in Indology, the French Institute of Pondicherry has a collection of 8,600 Hindu religious manuscripts and similar records, forming part of India’s National Mission for Manuscripts. Comprising 8,187 ancient palm-leaf bundles, 360 paper codices and 1,144 recent paper transcripts, it is the largest collection of manuscripts primarily transmitting texts of the Saiva Siddhanta tradition of Hinduism. The collection was started in 1955 by the institute's founder-director, Jean Filliozat, who desired to explain the Hindu temple and what happens in it. The manuscripts were gathered from collections of temples, priests and monasteries across South India and brought to the institute with the intention of preserving, transcribing and translating them. Four volumes of a catalog describing in detail the contents of 4,000 texts transmitted in 475 of the palm-leaf bundles were published in 1986, 1987, 1990 and 2002. Cataloging has continued using flatbed scanning and digital photography technology in conjunction with a computerized database.
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“Anyone who has invented a better mousetrap, or the contemporary equivalent, can expect to be harassed by strangers demanding that you read their unpublished manuscripts or undergo the humiliation of public speaking, usually on remote Midwestern campuses.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)