Imagine a web domain dedicated to providing information about Tamil Nadu’s stone inscriptions. It provides details of more than 8,500 inscriptions, including those in Tamil-Brahmi (aka Tamili), with their dates, locations, and summaries. It also allows you to look up the meaning of words found in these inscriptions and check where, when, and under whose regime they were used the most.
Hover your cursor over Tamil-Brahmi letters to find their contemporary Tamil equivalents, an aid for enthusiasts to identify and potentially read the script. Add image and word mapping to the mix, and an embedded interactive map that allows you to locate stone inscriptions. Now imagine all this data, found in the published books of the state and research scholars, made easily searchable and readable online, for free.
There’s no need to imagine it. Udhayam.in already exists.
The project is largely the work of one person, Udhaya Shankar, a full-time designer employed at a private company. He devotes an average of six hours every day to Udhayam.in.
Seventeen years of his groundwork, fuelled by his own passion and interest in the subject, led to the Tamil Heritage Trust recognising his work and honouring him in the city on October 25. The trust honoured him with the THT Prof. S. Swaminathan Heritage Award 2026, which included a citation and a cash prize of Rs 50,000.
Speaking of his selection, PS Sriraman, a retired superintending archaeologist with the Archaeological Survey of India and a jury member, says, “Awarding Udhaya was a unanimous decision. There were brilliantly performing individuals from whom we had to choose… But we are happy and proud to have chosen the right person, who has individually put in such a large effort.”
Where it began
The engineering graduate recalls his passion for creating kolam art and his dream to distribute it through the internet as the starting point of his domain’s journey. “This was around 2007. I didn’t understand the technology enough to start a website because I was just a designer,” he shares, adding, “There was a Google group I was a part of back then, and I met the group’s admin once. I told him about how I have digitised kolams, and he took interest. Within five days, he created a website (Udhayam.in) to upload around 500 of my kolam designs to maintain it as a database.”
Soon after, a request to create a font for Tamil-Brahmi came knocking at Udhaya’s door. “At that time, I couldn’t read Tamil-Brahmi, and I was recommended a few books to learn to read inscriptions from,” he says. Having learnt to read the script, he began comparing the forms of its letters across inscriptions to design the font (refer image). So he travelled, took pictures of stone inscriptions, standardised the style, and the result was the Adinatha Tamil-Brahmi font, released in 2012.
The font project led Udhaya to the broader idea of creating a searchable database of Tamil inscriptions from different periods. “Many scholars, students, and enthusiasts may be spending a lot of time finding the right books in libraries as I did. To simplify it for them, I began the work for the digital database around 2015,” Udhaya shares.
Designed to learn Staying true to his passion for kolams, the website features a dedicated gallery showcasing his designs, alongside a section titled ‘Arttube’, where visitors can learn to trace and recreate his kolam patterns. There are also free Tamil fonts available for use.
Hurdles and dreams
“Ascertaining the locations of where these inscriptions are found was one of the most difficult parts,” Udhaya says. Place names and district boundaries in older publications did not always correspond to those in use today. He explains, “From books — my source data — I started hunting for the villages first, found the inscriptions, and linked them to their location information as of today. I basically had to reverse engineer.”
Old records placed inscription ARIE 1887/66 in Kirumuttugur in the erstwhile North Arcot district. After a tiring search, Udhaya identified the village as present-day Kilumuttukur in Vellore district’s KV Kuppam Taluk.
Another task that proved to be difficult for him was deciphering and digitising more than 100 symbols found in inscriptions. “That is something I am still working on,” he teases. Alongside this, the work to enrich the domain with more data (close to 32,000 more inscriptions) is also underway.
“I have ideas to develop all this further, that could take me 10 years at least. There are some 13 ideas actually. I even want to work on copper plate inscriptions in the near future, and I definitely would want to work on it all full-time if I get enough financial aid,” he says, on a bittersweet note. The project, which costs close to Rs 10 lakh annually, gets funded 90 per cent by Udhaya himself, he says. “The rest of it is from donations both in cash and in kind (like laptops). Over the years, volunteers have helped me in whatever ways they can, and I have hired a handful of students to help with typing out inscriptions,” he notes.
In the end, the dream that fuels his long and tiring days is simple: “To turn inscriptions into easily searchable, accessible, and readable data for the future generations.”
To power this dream through donations, contact 9940232560.
Award for epigraphist
Tamil Heritage Trust also awarded the V. Venkayya Epigraphy Award 2026 to the late Dr C Somasundara Rao, in recognition of his contributions to epigraphy. His daughter, Surya Lakshmi, accepted the award. Recalling the late epigraphist’s goodwill, Surya shares, “After his death, I got to know that back in the day, there was a poor student who couldn’t afford a book. My father, who had the copy of the book, wrote the book by hand — a script of 77 inscriptions — and gave it to the student... My nana breathed, lived, and even died in epigraphy because the last work of his that was in progress before he died was writing the acceptance speech for this award… I am greatly beholden to the Tamil Heritage Trust for having bestowed this award on my father.”