India’s first palm-leaf manuscript museum to be set up in Thiruvananthapuram

Thiruvananthapuram: The first palm-leaf manuscript museum in India is all set to open at the Central Archives at Fort in Thiruvananthapuram.

The museum will feature a rare collection of over 1 crore of palm-leaf manuscripts available with the Archives Department including administrative documents from the Venad era and political and social documents from Travancore, Kochi and Malabar.

The museum will also display manuscripts featuring ancient alphabets including Vattezhuthu, Kolezhuthu and Malayanma. The translation of these ancient scripts will make it easier for visitors to read and understand the contents.

Most of the manuscripts are administrative documents including orders, land transactions and court documents. The terms and words used in each century and changes to the language and writing style will be of great help to students of History and Language studies.

This museum will help us learn more and popularize the ancient manuscripts that are part of our heritage, said Archives Department director J. Rajikumar.

Minister of Archaeology and Port, Kadannappalli Ramachandran, inaugurated the setting up of the museum at 2 pm on Wednesday. The museum will be designed by Kerala Museum, a state government agency.  The aim is to complete the procedures and open the museum for the public in 6 months.

The process of translating the manuscripts under the Archives Department to Malayalam is 60 percent complete.