It was a series of articles in The Hindu that ignited my love affair with the Sarasvati Mahal library.
The Thanjavur Maharaja Serfoji’s Sarasvati Mahal Library, or the Sarasvati Mahal, has more than 69,000 printed books, 49,000 manuscripts (25,000 in palm leaves and the rest in paper), and 1,200 Modi documents. The library has existed from the 17th century, but its present size is due to the efforts of Maratha ruler Serfoji II (1777 – 1832) (the library was renamed in his honour). The library’s catalogue reads like a reader’s dream come true. Texts on philosophy, religion and literature share shelves with texts on food, medicine, rearing elephants, horses and falcons, improving fruit yield, fortune telling and even water divining.
The collection can be classified by language, with more than 3,000 manuscripts in Tamil. Many are copies of ancient Tamil poems, works on grammar, and those dealing with religion and philosophy. Most of them also have rare commentaries written by scholars of that age explaining the text in prose.
Works in Sanskrit form the largest component. These include several versions of the classical works of Kalidasa, the Ramayana , Artha and Kama Shastra s with commentaries.
Several manuscripts are on significant Hindu texts like the Vedas and the Upanishad s. Others elucidate various schools of philosophy or have important shloka s and their methods of recitation. Some of these are illustrated beautifully. Two interesting works in Sanskrit are by Chidambara Kavi. In one, the shloka s when read left to right become the Ramayana and if read in reverse, the Mahabaratha . Also by the same author is a work where each verse becomes the Ramayana, Mahabaratha or the Bhagavatha, depending on where you pause in the line.
Dramas and treatises on music and dance form another large component of the Sanskrit manuscripts.
Books in European languages were purchased by Serfoji II. Most of them have notes written by the king on the margins and are kept in the cupboards originally made for them. The entire book collection of the library numbers 5,000, including the older works of the 16th century from Serfoji’s time when ‘s’ was printed as ‘f’.
The collection includes fiction and non-fiction books. Some are coffee table books on subjects like the sartorial fashions in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, methods of Chinese torture, costumes and occupations in Turkey and China, and so on.
A large bound volume has maps in several languages. Many are military maps, one even showing troop movements during the French siege of Madras. A map of the Indian subcontinent shows a very prominent Adams’ Bridge that was probably more visible then. Most maps are from the 18th century.
The library has more than 1000 manuscripts and books in Telugu. Telugu was the court language of the Nayaks and in the Maratha period, the favoured language for music. Hence most of the works pertain to music, including those of Purandhara Dasa, whose compositions are among the earliest in Carnatic music and are still sung today. Called suladhi s, they are in Kannada or in Bhandira Basha, an extinct language.
Many manuscripts contain songs composed in the Nayak and Maratha courts — some of these are operas for staging, others are songs to be sung. Very few include the swara s and thus cannot be sung today as they were intended. Many don’t have the mudhra or poet’s name embedded in the verse and hence authorship cannot be traced either.
Bundled in cloth, Modi documents are written in sheets of handmade paper and contain court and administrative records. Modi is the shorthand version of Marathi and was created in the 13th or 14th century. It was favoured as the court language since it could be written fast, without having to lift the pen from the document too frequently. Modi characters are shaped in circular forms. Grammar was not used in Modi, plus the concept of punctuation was not present then. Modi was difficult to typeset and print, and thus its usage declined. Today, there are just a handful of scholars who can read the text. In the 19th century, all the Modi documents under the British were segregated into three categories: A, B, and C. The first two categories were deemed important and moved to Madras. The third was to be destroyed, but the citizens of Thanjavur and the royal family prevented this and they await scholars to explore their secrets.
The India International Centre in New Delhi recently hosted an exhibition on the Thanjavur Sarasvati Mahal Library, curated by the author.
Pradeep Chakravarthy is the author of Thanjavur — A Cultural History .
pradeepchakravarthy75@gmail.com
Published - November 07, 2015 04:15 pm IST
