Thanjavur, also known as Thanjai, previously known as Tanjore, is a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the 11th biggest city in Tamil Nadu. Thanjavur is an important center of southern Indian religion, art, and architecture. Most of the Great Living Chola Temples, which are UNESCO World Heritage Monuments, are located in and around Thanjavur. The foremost among these, the Brihadeeswara Temple, built by the Chola emperor Rajaraja I, is located in the centre of the city. This temple has one of the largest bull statues in India carved out of a single granite rock. Thanjavur is also home to Tanjore painting, a painting style unique to the region. Thanjavur is the headquarters of the Thanjavur District. The city is an important agricultural centre located in the Kaveri Delta and is known as the Rice bowl of Tamil Nadu. Thanjavur is administered by a municipal corporation covering an area of 36.31 km2 (14.02 sq mi) and had a population of 222,943. Roadways are the major means of transportation, while the city also has rail connectivity. The nearest airport is Tiruchirapalli International Airport, located 59.6 km (37.0 mi) away from the city. The nearest seaport is Karaikal, which is 94 km (58 mi) away from Thanjavur. The city first rose to prominence during the reign of the Cholas when it served as the capital of the empire. After the fall of the Cholas, the city was ruled by various dynasties such as the Mutharaiyar dynasty, the Pandyas, the Vijayanagar Empire, the Madurai Nayaks, the Thanjavur Nayaks, the Thanjavur Marathas and the British Empire. It has been a part of independent India since 1947.
Civaka Cintamani, also spelled as Jivaka Chintamani, is one of the five great Tamil epics. Authored by a Madurai-based Jain ascetic Tiruttakkatēvar in the early 10th century, the epic is a story of a prince who is the perfect master of all arts, perfect warrior and perfect lover with numerous wives. The Civaka Cintamani is also called the Mana Nool. The epic is organized into 13 cantos and contains 3,145 quatrains in viruttam poetic meter. Its Jain author is credited with 2,700 of these quatrains, the rest by his guru and another anonymous author.
Saraswathi Mahal Library, also called Thanjavur Maharaja Serfoji's Saraswathi Mahal Library is a library located in Thanjavur (Tanjore), Tamil Nadu, India. It is one of the oldest libraries in Asia established during 16th century by Nayakar kings of Thanjavur and has on display a rare collection of Palm leaf manuscripts and paper written in Tamil and Sanskrit and a few other indigenous languages of india. The collection comprises well over 49,000 volumes, though only a tiny fraction of these are on display. The library has a complete catalog of holdings, which is being made available online. Some rare holdings can be viewed on site by prior arrangement. Encyclopedia Britannica mentions the library as the "Most remarkable library of India".
Tigalari or Tulu script is a Southern Brahmic script which was used to write Tulu, Kannada, and Sanskrit languages. It was primarily used for writing Vedic texts in Sanskrit. It evolved from the Grantha script.
Uttamadhanapuram Venkatasubbaiyer Swaminatha Iyer was a Tamil scholar and researcher who was instrumental in bringing many long-forgotten works of classical Tamil literature to light. His singular efforts over five decades brought to light major literary works in Tamil and contributed vastly to the enrichment of its literary heritage. Iyer published over 90 books in his lifetime, on a variety of matters connected to classical Tamil literature, and collected over 3,000 paper manuscripts, palm-leaf manuscripts and notes of various kinds.
The Eight Anthologies, known as Eṭṭuttokai or "Eight Collections" in the literature, is a classical Tamil poetic work that forms part of the Eighteen Greater Texts (Patiṉeṇmēlkaṇakku) anthology series of the Sangam Literature. The Eight Anthologies and its companion anthology, the Ten Idylls (Pattuppāṭṭu), is the oldest available Tamil literature. According to Kamil Zvelebil, a scholar of Tamil literature and history, dating these Eight Anthologies or their relative chronology is difficult, but the scholarship so far suggested that the earliest layers were composed sometime between the 1st century BCE and 2nd century CE, while the last layers were completed between 3rd and 5th century CE.
Manikkavacakar, was a 9th-century Tamil saint and poet who wrote Thiruvasagam, a book of Shaiva hymns. Speculated to have been a minister to the Pandya king Varagunavarman II, he lived in Madurai.
The National Mission for Manuscripts (NAMAMI) is an autonomous organisation under Ministry of Culture, Government of India, established to survey, locate and conserve Indian manuscripts, with an aim to create national resource base for manuscripts, for enhancing their access, awareness and use for educational purposes. The Mission was initiated in February 2003, by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India and Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts is the nodal agency for the execution of this project. It creates bibliographic databases of Indian manuscripts and is involved in the conservation and preservation of the manuscripts.
Valaiyapadhi, also spelled Valayapathi, is one of the five great Tamil epics, but one that is almost entirely lost. It is a story of a father who has two wives, abandons one who gives birth to their son, and the son grows up and seeks his real father. The dominant emotion of this epic is love, and its predominant object is the inculcation of Jain principles and doctrines.
Venkataraman Raghavan (1908–1979) was a Sanskrit scholar and musicologist. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Padma Bhushan and the Sahitya Akademi Award for Sanskrit, and authored over 120 books and 1200 articles.
Kudavayil Balasubramanian is an archaeologist from Tamil Nadu, India. He is former curator and publication manager at Saraswathi Mahal Library located at Thanjavur. He is credited with discovering more than 100 inscriptions, coins, copper plates, sculptures, and paintings now in museums and temples in that state.
T.M Saraboji Also known as Mani Maran , is one of the Tamil scholars Tamil Nadu. He is working as Tamil Pandit at Saraswathi Mahal Library located at Tanjore in Tamil Nadu. He is interested in Tamil language, art, culture and manuscriptology and is contributed in these areas.
Kaalingar, also known as Kalingarayar, was a Tamil scholar and commentator known for his commentary on the Thirukkural. He was among the canon of Ten Medieval Commentators of the Kural text highly esteemed by scholars. He was also among the five ancient commentators whose commentaries had been preserved and made available to the Modern era, the others being Manakkudavar, Pari Perumal, Paridhi, and Parimelalhagar.
S. N. Sriramadesikan was an Indian scholar of Sanskrit and Tamil, lecturer, principal, editor and publisher. Among his many works, he is best known for translating the Tirukkural into both Sanskrit and English.
Sri Ramayanamu is the magnum opus work by Katta Varadaraju in Telugu based on the Hindu epic Ramayana. This Ramayana presented to the Telugu public for the first time is a unique production of Dwipada Kavya, which belongs to Desi or indigenous literary compositions.
Pancha Pakshi Shastra is a system of divination historically popular among Hindu astrologers of southern India.
Kaṇakkusāraṃ is a comprehensive treatise in Manipravalam, composed in the 16th-17th century CE, dealing with elementary arithmetic and methods for solving arithmetical problems arising in the everyday life of members of an agricultural community. The book was composed by one Nīlakṇṭha; but other than the name, nothing more definite is known about the author. The date of composition of the book has also not been determined. The significance of the work is that it was composed in a variant of the local vernacular language addressing the needs of ordinary people and it is one of the earliest such work in Malayalam. In comparison, Yuktibhasha, composed in pure Malayalam and published in the middle of the sixteenth century, is an advanced text on mathematics and astronomy addressed to the advanced students and scholars of mathematics. The book is composed in verses and it also contains a commentary both in Manipravalam language. In the book, the author has claimed that the work is based on Sanskrit texts like Bhaskara II's Līlāvatī and older Malayalam texts on mathematics like Kaṇakkadhikāraṃ.
Kaṇakkatikāram is a Tamil mathematics book believed to have been written by Kari Nayanar hailing from Korakaiyur in Cholanad. Considering the internal evidences, the work has been dated to 15th century CE. "It is significant that the mathematical methods found in these delve into the material life of the people and approach the dimensions of daily labor enumeratively." According to the author, the contents of the book are based on material available in standard Sanskrit treatises on mathematics like 'Līlāvatī".
Kaṇita Tīpikai is a Tamil book authored by Paṇṭala Rāmasvāmi Nāykkar and published in 1825 dealing with arithmetic. It is the first Tamil book on mathematics ever to be printed and it is the first Tamil book ever to introduce the symbol for zero and also to discuss the decimal place value notation or positional notation using Tamil numerals. Iravatham Mahadevan, a well known Indian epigraphist, and M. V. Bhaskar noted thus in an article published in The Hindu in December 2011: "The convention of using symbols for 10, 100, and 1000 in expressing the higher numerals was current in Tamil Nadu until the advent of printing and the adoption of the international form of Indian numerals with place-value system." Senthi Babu D, a historian and researcher attached to the French Institute of Pondicherry, observes:
