Cultural HeritageOpen Days at the Kerala Manuscript Preservation Centre in Thrissur

21 May 2025

Photo: Olga Nowicka

On April 28 and 29, the Kerala Manuscript Preservation Centre in Thrissur hosted Open Days, offering visitors an opportunity to learn more about the ongoing preservation, digitisation, and cataloguing efforts carried out in the ‘Digital Preservation of Kerala Archives’ (DiPiKA) Project.

The event attracted a wide range of visitors eager to explore Kerala’s rich manuscript heritage and to gain insights into the methodologies and technologies employed in its safeguarding.

During the two-day event, the Centre welcomed groups of students from local universities, scholars from India and abroad, private manuscript collection owners, and members of the local community interested in the initiatives of DiPiKA. Among the distinguished guests were Dr Mohanan Kunnummal, Vice Chancellor of the University of Kerala; Dr M.V. Natesan (Amrita University); and international scholars such as Professor Kyoko Amano (Kyoto University), Dr Natalia Korneeva (Moscow State University), and Dr Lucy May Constantini (University of Vienna), as well as students of Manuscriptology from the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit in Kalady.

All visitors were offered guided tours of the Centre, which introduced them to its activities and the manuscript collections undergoing digitisation. Visitors also had the opportunity to interact directly with the research team. Student groups also participated in hands-on sessions organised by the DiPiKA team. These sessions included preparing a transcription of a few folios from palm-leaf manuscripts belonging to the Vaṭanke Matham Brahmasvam collection.

Moreover, a new blog on DiPiKA was laucnhed this April, where you can now follow all the latest news about the project activities.