Thick tomes, their yellowed pages held together by miracle and sticky tape, quaint typefaces in old English, and subjects as diverse as fish, rock-cut paintings, travel across seas, and literature form ‘A series of stray papers’.
The exhibition of rare books in the possession of the Kerala State Central Library got under way at the library auditorium on Wednesday. The books on display here date back to 1569. The library has no records of source for most of them.
And there is no turning the pages to breathe in the musty smell of brittle paper, for the books are neatly wrapped in cellophane to prevent further damage. Those looking to browse through the contents and mine little nuggets of information need not despair however. The books have been digitised and can be perused.
The oldest in the collection is a book from 1569 on the successors of Alexander the Great, translated into English by Thomas Stocker.
The title of the exhibition is taken from a book by James Douglas called ‘Bombay and Western India – A series of stray papers.’ A number of books are illustrated. These include a book on painting manuscripts of the Madurai Meenakshi temple, ‘Illustrations of rock cut temples of India’ by James Fergusson, and ‘Portraits of the Princes and People of India’ by Honble. Miss Eden.
‘Temples of Satrunjaya’ from 1869 has photographs and a descriptive introduction. ‘Ancient India’ focuses on the period till the Gupta dynasty with focus on architecture and sculpture. There is a book on ‘Bauddha and Jaina religions.’
Sabda Veda, a recent addition to the collection, is gifted by the Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation.
‘The six voyages of John Baptista Tavernier’ and ‘The Book of Ser Marco Polo’ appeal to the traveller within. The first English translation of ‘Sacontala or The Fatal Ring’ from Sanskrit and Prakrit, ‘The tragedy of Tolstoy,’ and ‘The confessions of a caricaturist’ – these are some of the other books on display.
There is a good collection of Malayalam books. Some of them are one on Sakthan Thampuran, G. Sankara Kurup’s translation of Gitanjali, Valmiki Ramayanam, one on Kali worship in Kerala written by Chelat Achyuta Menon, and on Sree Chithira Tirunal’s European travels.
‘The Fishes of Malabar,’ ‘Speeches and messages of Sir Bala Rama Varma’ with foreword by C.P Ramaswami Aiyar, and ‘Modern Travancore’ are among the books on the State in English.
A book without a title has illustrations and photographs on Jaipur, Fatehpur Sikri, Kolkata, Varanasi, Mount Abu, Gwalior as they looked then.
A collection of cartoons on libraries, and photos of international writers that the library acquired in 1950 are also on display. The exhibition will be on from 10.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. till November 30.
