THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The State Archives Department is eyeing a UNESCO World Heritage tag for its impressive, centuries-old collection of palm-leaf manuscripts. A Unesco team, which is currently touring Kerala as part of a UN post-flood disaster need assessment, has offered support to the department to get mammoth collection inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage list, said a top officer.
On Saturday, the Unesco team led by Junhi Han, programme specialist for culture, visited the Central Archives of the department in Thiruvananthapuram and examined parts of the collection which, in its entirety, runs into approximately one crore individual leaves.
“Inclusion in the list provides great advantages in addition to the international spotlight. For one, the state will get grants for its continued conservation. A Unesco tag will further promote possibilities for international research into the material and also tourism,” said Archives director P Biju. “No other country has such a vast collection of palm-leaf manuscripts. The oldest dates back to the 15th century.”
The oldest among the collection include the ‘Mathilakam Rekhakal’ pertaining to the Padmanabhaswamy Temple and the princely state of Travancore. Court records, land settlement records and royal decrees are part of the collection.
“The script found in these ‘Churunas’ (palm-leaf scrolls), ‘Mulakkarams’ (bamboo splints) and copper plates include Tamil, Sanskrit, old Malayalam and Brahmi,” he said. The department also maintains sizeable collections at the regional archives in Ernakulam and Kozhikode.
That said, the department and its archival collection must clear umpteen hurdles before the Unesco tag can be awarded. Primarily, the department has to submit a comprehensive project detailing the cultural and historical significance of the manuscripts through official channels to Unesco. The department will soon embark on the preliminaries, Biju said.
Han and team visited the Archives Department to review the measures taken to restore and preserve archival material damaged in the mid-August floods.After the flood waters receded, the department had dispatched teams to various parts of the state who recovered documents and manuscripts including palm-leaf manuscripts and old books for restoration and preservation.