Kept in the safe custody of a German University for nearly two centuries, hundreds of Malayalam books are all set to get a fresh lease of life online.
In an ambitious initiative, about 200 Malayalam books, taken to Germany by none other than Hermann Gundert in 1859, will soon be digitised.
The Tubingen University in Germany, along with the Malayalam wiki community, will undertake the mammoth task of digitising and cataloguing centuries-old Malayalam books. Marking the beginning, scanned copies of two Malayalam books -- ‘Pazhamchol Mala’ and ‘1000 Pazhamchollukal’ -- will be handed over to the wiki community by Dr Heike Moser of Indology Department, Tubingen University, at Kerala Press Academy on Thursday.Gundert had taken nearly 1,000 books, written in Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tulu, Kannada and Tamil, when he returned to Germany.
The collection also houses manuscripts, written notes and jottings on the margins of printed books.