“I often find my material in dustbins,” says Reverend Dr. S. Mani Valan S.J. As founder-director of the Centre for Christian Research (CCR) in Tiruchi’s St. Joseph’s College and professor with over 30 years’ of teaching experience, the Jesuit priest has made it his life’s mission to archive ancient Tamil Christian literature through CCR.
In a way, the CCR’s objective is understandable, because the history of printing in southern India is intertwined with its religious movements. Christian missionaries are considered to have pioneered the modern printing press in Tamil Nadu.
The credit of publishing the very first Tamil booklet goes to Portuguese Jesuit missionary Henrique Henriques. His Thambiraan Vanakkam ( Doctrina Christam en Lingua Malauar Tamul ) printed in 1577, in Goa, is a pamphlet of Roman Catholic catechism and considered to be the very first book printed not just in Tamil, but in any Indian language.
Scholar-missionaries like Roberto De Nobili, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Constanzo G. Beschi (more widely known as Veeramamunivar in south India), helped to revolutionise Tamil publishing in the following centuries.
Why, then, does Fr. Mani Valan have to peep into dustbins to find rare Christian works in Tamil? “Our people are not very interested in preserving books and manuscripts,” explains Fr. Mani Valan, a bit ruefully.
Before the advent of printing, Christian literature in the form of morality tales, biographies of saints, and hymn collections and so on, was being produced on palm leaf manuscripts.
Reading them requires special skill, because their inscribers left out the punctuation dots, apparently to preserve the brittle leaf base. “Today, we need specialists to read these manuscripts. But earlier, even those who hadn’t been to school were able to read them easily. So printing was just an addition to the knowledge base,” says Fr. Mani Valan.
Since its inception in 2009, CCR has reprinted 17 volumes of archival works, a majority of them taken from palm leaf manuscripts. Lemon oil and red cotton cloth wrappers are used to keep the fragile leaf manuscripts from crumbling.
Fr. Mani Valan is on a quest to reprint 42 Christian epics, of which 20 have already been gathered.
“Most people are reluctant to hand over these works even if they have no real use for them,” says Fr. Mani Valan. “Very often, families burn or destroy the palm leaf manuscripts and books when their owner dies.”
Appealing to people to donate their unwanted literature is just one way that CCR sources its material. Shops selling old books are another source. But very often, as Fr. Mani Valan admits, the only way is to look for manuscripts in the bins of discarded printed matter. “These torn and mutilated books are like abandoned children. I make it a point to visit libraries where stock is being cleared, because sometimes it is possible to find rare books in the dustbin,” he says.
As examples, he shows us a copy of Fr. Beschi’s Tamil classic Thembavani (The Unfading Garland) issued by St. Joseph’s College library in 1895 when it was functioning in Nagapattinam. “I found it in a dustbin,” he says. A more recent example he pulls out from the shelves is a Ph.D thesis on the Jesuit poet Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-99) from the 1980s, also rescued from the trash.
As the CCR widens its scope to include sections on arts, music, numismatics, stamps and architecture related to the Christian faith not just in Tamil, but in other languages as well, Fr. Mani Valan hopes the archive, which has been rated as an ‘Institute of Excellence’, will someday have its own premises. “We would like CCR’s publications to be easily accessible to students. At the same time, we could emerge as a platform for research scholars,” he says.
Man of letters
Fr. Mani Valan’s interest in archiving religious literature was sparked off when his professor suggested that he should research the 1898 Biblical musical drama Oothari Pillai Vilasam (based on The Prodigal Son ), written by Mariyadas, for his M.Phil thesis in 1992.
“It took me many months to find one copy of the book. That was when I realised that Tamil Christian literature was not being properly maintained,” he says.
Born in 1953 in the village of Ilayarasanendal, Tirunelveli district, Fr. Mani Valan showed an early aptitude for Tamil. When he was serving as professor and Vice-Principal at Loyola College, Chennai from 1988-1992, Fr. Mani Valan founded ‘Veeramamunivar Ilakkiya Mandram’, a forum to promote the correct usage of Tamil. From 1992, Fr. Mani Valan has been working in St. Joseph’s College in various capacities (Controller of Exams, Director of PG Courses, Vice-Principal, Hostel Director, Deputy Principal, Library Director, among others), and though he retired in 2011, he continues to serve the institution, notably at CCR.
The clergyman is a noted poet in Tamil with several anthologies to his name. Some of his poems have been prescribed for school text-books and Civil Service exams.
Also a musician, Fr. Mani Valan is assistant director, Summer School of Carnatic Music in Chennai, and trained under Rajappa Bhagavathar. He plays the keyboard and guitar, and has composed 40 songs.
He has also tried his hand at drama. Puthiya Bethlehem Kuravanji (The New Fortuneteller of Bethlehem), is a dance-drama that he adapted for Tiruchi’s Kalai Kaveri College of Fine Arts from the original play by Vedanayagam Sastriar written in 1800.
“I took 20 hours to write 14 songs for this play,” recalls Fr. Mani Valan. “The old version was more Sanskritised, I have updated it for younger audiences.”
