It was quite the return-of-the-native moment as India recently welcomed the Anaimangalam copper plates from the Netherlands, where they had been kept at Leiden University since 1862.
The Chola-period inscriptions on 21 plates, weighing over 30kg and bearing the seal of the great Rajaraja Chola, came back to India after nearly 300 years since they were taken to the Netherlands. On May 16, the Leiden University handed the plates over to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at The Hague.
While stories of the copper plates fill news reports and social media reels, there is another, lesser-known story behind the Leiden Copper Plates (as they came to be known after being housed at Leiden University) — that of Dr Achuthan Govindankutty Menon, a Malayali academic who chanced upon the plates in 1968 when he went to Leiden for research.
Achuthan later pursued a career as professor of South Asian Studies and Linguistics at the very same institution, after higher studies at Kerala University.
Notably, Achuthan led discussions from the university’s side with Indian authorities on the academic protocols behind the transfer of the plates — a subject that had been part of his research for nearly 30 years.
TNIE caught up with the retired professor, who is now settled in the Netherlands, over the phone. Excerpts from the interview:
Could you explain your association with the Leiden plates?
I first saw them in September 1968. I was excited because I had heard about the copper plates while I was a postgraduate student of Tamil and later a researcher in Thiruvananthapuram. I was very keen to study them closely, especially the script used to write them in the 11th century.
Your study has also been about the journey of the plates from India. How did they land in the Netherlands?
The Anaimangalam Sembedukal (sembu = copper, and edu = base used for writing), as they were known before they came to Leiden, were probably unearthed during the Dutch East India Company’s control over Nagapattinam. They were taken to Surat, from where a Dutch missionary, Florentius Camper, brought them to the Netherlands in 1713. The plates became part of the missionary’s family heirloom until 1862, when they were spotted by a Leiden University professor who was married to a Camper descendant. The plates were then transferred to the university, where they remained until May 2026.
How did studies on the plates begin if no one knew what they were?
A label on the plates described them as an “ola from Malabar”, and so they were long assumed to be a palm-leaf letter of the kind sent by the Malabar kings to the Dutch East India Company. A French Indologist in the late 1700s corrected this, noting that they were from the Coromandel Coast. After this, there is no recorded study of the plates until the late 19th century, when Sir Walter Eliot, the British collector of Nagapattinam, came to know about them and informed the Archaeological Survey of South India. Leiden University was then requested to provide a facsimile copy, based on which Natesa Shastry deciphered the text as a land deed in 1886, followed by Subramania Iyer in the early 1900s. Yet no physical scrutiny of the plates was undertaken until 1968.
Could you please give a gist of the content on the plates?
The plates record a request made to Rajaraja Chola by King Maravijayathungavarman of Srivijaya (an ancient Javanese empire) for a grant of land to establish a Buddha Vihara in Chola territory.
Rajaraja orally granted Anaimangalam and eight other villages within the Chola jurisdiction for the establishment of the Choolamanivarma Buddha Vihara in 1006 CE. He also exempted the vihara from ‘pallichantham’, or tax payments, on those villages.
Later, Rajendra Chola, his son, had the grant inscribed on the copper plates, and his son Kulothunga Chola added further grants. The plates were then clamped together with a large metal ring and sealed with the official Chola seal of authority.
The inscribed texts are in Sanskrit and Tamil. The confluence of the two languages is interesting…
That was quite the norm then. Sanskrit was used for ‘prasiddhi’ to describe the greatness of the Chola bloodline, while Tamil was used to record the grant itself. The copper plates were written in old Tamil, and the Sanskrit portions were written in the old Grantha script.
This reflects the influence and coexistence of both languages during the Chola period. We also studied later influences, including the Portuguese, the Maratha Nayaks and the Dutch. In their records, the names of the villages mentioned in the copper plates recur. This suggests that the decree became embedded in local culture and that Chola regulations governing those villages continued despite changes in political power.
What happened to the Buddha vihara?
It fell victim to time and successive regimes. When the Dutch took over Nagapattinam, they used some of its tall structures as lighthouses. Later, the British demolished what remained and reused the building materials. However, recent excavations have uncovered remnants of the site.
The plates have remained in the Netherlands for three centuries. Why did the transfer not happen earlier?
Rajaraja Chola has always been a source of cultural pride, especially through books like ‘Ponniyin Selvan’. Now, after the films based on the novel, public sentiment has become even stronger. My 2001 article in the ‘International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics’, titled ‘Copper Plates to Silver Plates: Cholas, Dutch and Buddhism’, was also consulted before India made the request for the transfer.
What do you feel about the controversial Keeladi and Sinauli findings?
As researchers, we document our work based on academic parameters. My findings showed how the copper plates witnessed centuries of change across more than 1,000 years. My study also demonstrated how two languages coexisted during the Chola period, each serving distinct functions. No hierarchy was imposed on them. Therefore, reminders of the past that emerge through research should be respected rather than ranked as superior or inferior, or subjected to political interpretations.
You are a Malayali from Palakkad. How did you become interested in Tamil?
I was educated in the Tamil medium because my father, a railway employee, was posted in Tamil Nadu. I completed my undergraduate studies in science at Victoria College, Palakkad,
and later switched to Tamil for my postgraduate studies at Kerala University in Thiruvananthapuram. I then pursued a PhD in linguistics under my mentor V I Subramoniam.
My work also involved tracing the roots of Malayalam, for which I studied a version of the Ramayana predating Thunchath Ezhuthachan’s work, called ‘Ramacharitam’. It was written in the ‘paatu’ style, in a simple Tamil-like language. I later wrote about this in an article titled ‘From Proto-Tamil Malayalam to West Coast Dialects’ in the ‘Indo-Iranian Journal’. The work supported Malayalam’s claim for classical language status.
You were also part of the initial efforts in language-to-machine translation in India...
After my retirement in 2005, I was invited to Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham for a government-backed project related to this field. Later, Google also sought my opinion on the subject. Today, the area has developed considerably. However, we at Leiden had already begun working on related issues much earlier. For my research on ‘Ramacharitam’, I had to encode the language to make it computer-compatible and then decode it again.
How do you feel about letting go of the copper plates that have been part of your work for so many years?
Well, they have returned to the place whose legacy they represent. But they are also part of humanity’s shared heritage. Here at Leiden, we have created accurate digital copies of them. To me, the plates are witnesses to time, and there is still so much more to learn from them. The work on them must continue.