It is said that Kodungallur Kunjikuttan Thampuran took only just 874 days for word by word translation of Mahabharata. ‘Kerala Vyasa’ has a group of followers from High Schools in Wayanad. Around 800 students from High Schools in Wayanad are busy digitising the Kunjikuttan Thampuran’s translation of Mahabharata, which will be uploaded to ‘Wiki Grandhasala’ (wikisource) in two months.
According to Sreejith Koiloth, master trainer of IT@School project, 85 per cent of translation works were over. “Students had some confusion since the original script was in old format. It needed proof reading and changes in formatting. It will take two-three months to upload into Wikipedia,” he said. Online availability of ‘Mahabharata’ will be a major step as the hard copy is rare in book stores.
“I tore my copy of Mahabharata and handed over the parts to the children. There are around 1.25 lakh slokas and around 7,000 pages. Children utilised their free time to type the verses in Malayalam. Most of them got support from IT trainers in their schools,” Sreejith said. The digitisation works began in November last.
“The works lagged a bit during exams,” Sreejith said. He added that students involved in the digitisation programmes would be given credits while uploading in Wikipedia. Scanned copy of the book too will be uploaded.
Wikisource is an online library of free content publications. It’s Malayalam version Wiki Grandhasala has a vast collection of rare and valuable literary works.
Malayalam Wikipedians began the work of Wiki grandhasala by uploading Poonthanam’s Jnanappana in March 2006. Works of Kumaransan, Changampuzha Krishna Pillai, Sree Narayana Guru, Kunjan Nambiar, Ezhutachchan, Melpathoor, among other prominent writers, are available in Wiki Grandhasala. Interested persons can read the complete version of Kerala Panineeyam, Krishna Gadha, Koran, Satyaveda Pushtakam etc from the Wiki Grandhasala. It also has a collection of some rare articles.