To: "Min Nuul"  
From: "Kannan" 
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 02:57:54 +0100 
Subject: [e-suvadi] Travel Diary 14.02.0 
Reply-to: [email protected] 

         
Dear Suvadians:

Prof.M.Ananda Krishnan insisted in KL that I should meet Dr.Prema
a Siddha physician who practices what she reads in the palm leaf
manuscripts. She is indeed a fellow suvadian and follows our
correspondence.
She could have thought that I might vanish after visiting Chennai and
Bangalore.But not. I did call her and informed her that I would visit her. She 
had generously offered me a room in her house and offered nice meals as
well!!

She is a very busy person. She heads the Department of Siddha Medicine
at Tanjore Tamil University, attends every day the free medical service 
for the University and earns extra income after 7 pm by running her private
clinic.
She works 6.5 days a week without any complaints inspite of her physical inability as a polio victim.

Right on the first day she took me to her University, introduced me to
the Dean, Science Faculty and the Vice Chancellor Dr.Sundaramurthy. 
Luckily, the VC knew about me during his visit to Germany. Prof.M.Anandakrishnan
and Dr.Ponnavaiko could have spoken to him about our efforts as well.
He has personal interest in preserving the old manuscripts. After our
meeting he informed the Department of Palm Leaf Manuscripts about my mission.

That enabled my visit to the above said department very positive. I was
shown the best of their collections. The manuscripts are clean and kept
in a way that would impress anybody. Some very rare official documents
from Chengalpattu district written by British official in extra long
palm leaves were shown to me. The entire district, street by street was
surveyed for taxation. Several huge bundles were read very patiently by a M.Phil
student for her Ph.D. I was allowed to scan one of their very rare
collection of picture palm leaves for THF. This will be one of our highlights for
this year.

Tamil University has no big grants or facility for digitizing their
collection of 1500 Tamil suvadis. Dr.Paramasivam, HOD showed me a shelf full of
Sanskrit suvadis obtained from Sri Rangam Temple. I gave hope to the VC that THF
will try its best to digitize their entire collection in the coming
years. We need to work out plans for that.

anpuTan
Kannan