Plea to digitize manuscripts at Thanjavur library

Madurai: The Madras high court has issued a notice to the central and state governments on a public interest litigation (PIL) which sought to digitalize palm leaf manuscripts at the Saraswathi Mahal library in Thanjavur district and put them out in public domain.

G Thirumurugan, chief coordinator of Tamil Nadu Meenavar Urimai Padukappu Eyakkam at Ramanathapuram district, in his petition stated that he recently visited the library, which is one of the oldest libraries in Asia and has a display of rare collection of palm leaf manuscripts written in Tamil, Sanskrit and other languages.

There are more than 49,000 volumes in the library and only a tiny fraction are on a display. However, none of these collections have been digitalised.

Thirumurgan said there is an impending danger to the manuscripts due to lethargic handling and at present there is an option to digitalize them. Digitalization would bring ancient Tamil culture and literature to be known across the world.

Hence, the petitioner moved the high court Madurai bench. When the petition was heard on Thursday, a division bench of justice R Mahadevan and justice S S Sundar issued notice to the governments and adjourned the case to a further date for hearing.