Anyone, who has ever been curious about the history of Puducherry, would have come across the name Ananda Rangapillai, the diarist who recorded the events that took place in French India. His diaries record the daily events from 1736 to 1760, which is the only written secular record available of events during the period.
Unfortunately, it is only recently that the full version of the diary has been discovered thanks to the efforts of a much forgotten Tamil scholar, Edouard Ariel.
Until the 1980s, Edouard Ariel’s version of the Ranga Pillai diaries remained unnoticed in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Even after their discovery, no steps were taken to work on them, historian M. Gobalakichenane from Orsay said.
Original diariesThe version of these diaries that are available are not complete. They are parts that were taken by the British from Puducherry and subsequently translated and stored in Madras.
The original diaries were recovered around 90 years after Ranga Pillai’s death by Gallois-Montbrun, a French official who purchased Ranga Pillai’s godown. He then decided to copy the diaries. The British, who were interested in the history of French India, made copies of certain sections of Gallois-Montbrun’s copy of the diary and translated it into English in 12 volumes.
By the time the British thought to come back and complete their translation of the diaries, they had already been destroyed in the cyclone that hit Puducherry in 1916.
Tamil verionThe Tamil version of these diaries that is available today has been translated from the English version, Mr. Gobalakichenane said.
It was then assumed that this was the only version of the diaries available, since the original and Gallois Montbrun’s copy had been destroyed.
However, there was one version that would only be discovered much later. This version had been copied from the original diaries by a French municipality official Edouard Ariel.
Edouard Ariel came to Pondicherry at the age of 26 to work at the Municipality. In addition to his work, he also became interested in the Tamil Language and he made a copy from the original Ranga Pillai diaries after Gallois-Montbrun’s discovery.
Luckily, his version of the diaries were kept safely at the archives in Pondicherry and then transferred to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.
While these works may not be as important as the Rangapillai diaries, they play a vital role since they explain a lot about the period of the American Independence struggle and the French Revolution and their impacts on Puducherry.
