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The Pondicherry Centre, India
Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient
Centre d'Indologie
Po Box 151
16-19 rue Dumas
605 001 Pondicherry, India
Tel.: + 91 413 233 45 39
Fax: + 91 413 233 08 86
administration@efeo-pondicherry.org
dominic.goodall@efeo.net
In 1955 Jean Filliozat, the distinguished Indianist who would be Director of the EFEO for twenty years, with the encouragement of the Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru, set up the French Institute in Pondicherry (IFP) dedicated to broadly studying the Indian world, including environmental aspects. For a long time members of the EFEO directed the IFP program in indology (including philology, history of art and architecture). This collaboration continued after the EFEO Center was established, in 1964, in a separate building that houses its own collections and provides facilities for its Indian collaborators.
Today the Center houses an indology library (about 8 000 titles), a collection of maps and drawings, as well as 1 600 manuscript texts on palm leaves in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Manipravalam. In 2005, “The Shivaite Manuscripts of Pondicherry” were entered in the UNESCO “World Memory” list at the joint request of the EFEO, the IFP, and the National Mission for Manuscripts of the Indian Government. The Center’s permanent team is made up of European and Indian scholars and technicians. Its work is regularly enriched by the presence of visiting specialists and doctoral students.
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Kiranagamah text on palm leaves |
The researchers at the Center work on the analysis of Sanskrit texts, and also on sources in Tamil and Telugu among the Dravidian languages. They carry out fieldwork in archaeology, art history, and ethnology. The main publications resulting from this research is in the form of editions – either original or critical – and translations of basic texts as well as studies in literature, archaeology, history, and anthropology.
Current research program:
- Intellectual history of the Saivasidhanta theological school
- Iconography and epigraphy of the Pallava et Chola temples
- Panini-style grammar; classical Sanskrit and Tamil literature
- Anthropology of the Indian merchant world
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