Nearly 28,000 estampages of Tamil inscriptions preserved in the epigraphy wing of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in Mysuru will be shifted to Chennai.
A communique in this regard was issued by the Director-General of ASI which is consequent to an order passed by the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court in August last year.
Estampage refers to impression of inscriptions obtained on inked paper and there are nearly 28,000 Tamil estampages preserved at the office of the Directorate of Epigraphy in Mysuru.
Senior officials in the department who confirmed the developments said they received an order from the ASI headquarters last week (January 6, 2022) and the process to shift the estampages has commenced.
A representative from the Chennai zonal office of the epigraphy wing was already in Mysuru verifying the documents and the records. However, officials said they were yet to ascertain how the estampages would be shifted and the time frame in which the exercise would be completed.
The court order was passed after a PIL was filed seeking the transfer of all documents and records pertaining to Tamil inscriptions from Mysuru to Chennai on the grounds that the Tamil inscriptions were not properly preserved. It was also argued that shifting the estampages to Chennai would make it easier for research scholars in Tamil Nadu to gain access to it and publish the findings.
The epigraphy branch was established as a wing of ASI at Bengaluru in 1886, relocated to Ooty in 1903, and shifted to Mysuru in 1966. It is engaged in copying inscriptions, deciphering and publishing the same. Scholars say epigraphy forms the bedrock for understanding and construction of history as the inscriptions are contemporary records, refer to events, kings, dates etc, and provided valuable data that comes in handy for historiographers and research scholars to fill the information gap in a region’s history.
The Directorate of Epigraphy in Mysuru has nearly 70,000 estampages of Sanskrit and Dravidian languages of which around 28,000 estampages of Tamil will now be shifted to its office in Chennai. The epigraphy branch at Nagpur deals with Arabic and Persian inscriptions
