To: [email protected]  
From: "naakannan" 
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 09:10:44 -0000  
Subject: [e-suvadi] Travel Diary 06.02.02 
Reply-to: [email protected] 
 
         
Dear Suvadians:

Mr.Jeganath of Karnata Gazettes took me to Mr.Ketharnath
Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Govt. of Karnataka. A very
plesant Mr.Ketharnath showed personal interest in
palm leaf manuscript preservation. He just returned after visiting 
Lakshmi Datachar of Melkottai who has a private collection
about 25,000 manuscripts in Sanskrit, Granta ,Tamil and other
dravidian languages. They are happy about our Tamil initiative
and may follow our model for Kannada. I learnt that millions
of manuscripts still unpublished in Karnataka and the
Government may initiate steps to digitize them. I insisted
to him that a Universal Manuscript Catalogue of Indian Languages
should be prepared to locate the MS source for topic wise
digitization. He told me about the possibility of a Govt. rule
to register palm leaf holdings. He insisted that I meet his
counter part in Delhi as Govt. of India is planning to launch a
nationwide Manuscript preservation project in this April. I'm
working out for a date as the Central ministries are busy
with the budget. He told me as well to meet Dr.Ramanujan,
Co-ordinator, Indian Heritage Group, CDAC (Center for Development
of Advanced Computing) which I did.

Dr.Ramanujan is a heriage link by himself if one looks at him. A 
typical Vaishnavite with a broad Thiruman and in ethenic dress siting
amidst Super computers! Dr.Ramanujan is a practising Vaishnavite,
an Engineer and a software developer. He involved in the development
of the famous ISSCI. He speaks fluently Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada,Pali
and a few other Indian tongues. He is instrumental in bringing
Sanskrit into the Cyber world. The entire vedas, upanishads and
related materials are available on-line now because of him. He works
constantly to hyperlink the e-texts for commentaries and other
related works. He wants to bring out the vocabilary of great
Sanskrit scholars such as Vedanta Desikan, Vyasa etc. His
preservation efforts include digitization of various local
editions of Vedas. He showed me a rare Tulu manuscript on Yajur
veda. He plans to begin digitizing the vedanta treatises of
Sankara, Ramanuja and Madvar. The Nalayira Divya Prapandam and
the commentaries will be digitized in the future. 

Interestingly, he still works with the first digital version of 
Divaya Prabandam produced by us that is currently available at 
Project Madurai Website. Infact, he follows PM model in e-texting, rather
than image creation and machine reading. He told me that he has a 
team of paid scholars all around the country who could read the 
original manuscript and e-text them. I asked wheather he could help 
us out if we identify some rare work in Tamil for electronic type 
setting! He agreed.

A prolific scholar in Sanskrit & Prakrit, he showed interest in
learning Tolkappiyam. Though he comes under the tradition of
Vadakalai Vaishnava Sampradaya, he is seemingly open to any work of 
great scholarship. Since his knowledge in Tamil is largely
focused on Divya Prapanda tradition, he would like to know more 
about other works of Tamil literature.

Meeting Dr.P.Ramanujan was plesant, enjoyable and educative.

anbpuTan
Kannan