The pilot project "Safeguarding for Posterity Two Private Collections of Palm-Leaf Manuscripts from the Tamil Country (EAP1294)" has been awarded a grant under the British Library's Endangered Archives Program, supported by the Arcadia Fund!

Suganya Anandakichenin (PI), Giovanni Ciotti (University of Hamburg) and S. A. S. Sarma (EFEO, Pondicherry) lead this ten-month project (August 2021-May 2022) aims to clean, digitize, and catalogue a portion of about 180 manuscripts belonging to two collections (called "Kalliṭaikuṟicci" and Villiampākkam).

These manuscripts, many of which date from the mid-19th century, contain texts of various genres, in Tamil, Sanskrit and Manipravalam, written in Tamil and Grantha. Previously neglected, these relics of the past will give us a clear idea of the reading and study choices of a Tamil and Vishnu Brahmin scholarly family from the 19th century onwards. Work on the project is currently underway at the EFEO Center in Pondicherry.