| Type | Research Library |
|---|---|
| Established | 1994 |
| Director | G. Sundar |
| Address | , , , 12°59′52″N80°14′54″E / 12.997841°N 80.248464°E |
| Campus | Urban |
| Website | http://www.rmrl.in |
The Roja Muthiah Research Library (RMRL), in Chennai, India, was founded in 1994, [1] and opened to researchers in 1996; it provides research materials for Tamil studies in a variety of fields of the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. [2] The Library is based on the collection of Roja Muthiah, who accumulated one of the world's finest private libraries of Tamil publications.
Roja Muthiah Research Library (RMRL) is a resource and research hub for south Indian studies covering diverse fields from humanities, social sciences to popular culture. The RMRL holds a unique collection and is widely recognized as a model library in India. With beginnings as a small private collection by Roja Muthiah, the library now holds an impressive 3,00,000 items and aims at continually preserving and expanding the historic archive.
The RMRL is what it is today thanks to the pioneering efforts of Roja Muthiah Chettiar from Kottaiyur. [3] Muthiah began his career as a sign-board artist and soon became enthralled by antiquarian books. and started collecting classical Tamil literature in 1950. At the time of his death in 1992, the collection comprised nearly 1,00,000 items in Tamil which included books, periodicals and several other literary gems. Understanding the significance of the library and the need to preserve its valuable contents the University of Chicago bought the entire collection in 1994. However, with the library being deeply rooted in south Indian culture and tradition, it was decided that the collection would remain in Tamil Nadu to form the nucleus of a research library. RMRL Trust now maintains this rare private collection of Tamil imprints in collaboration with the University of Chicago.
The vast collection in RMRL is a direct reflection of Tamil print heritage and culture, spanning a period of over 200 years, the earliest title being a book, 'Kantarantati' published in 1804. The spectrum of subjects covers language and literature, indigenous medicine, religion, folklore, popular culture, metaphysics, Gandhian studies, women's studies and modern history. It also holds material such as oleographs, theater handbills, wedding invitations and private letters. It is this unique eclectic range that sets RMRL apart from other libraries and archives. Considering that Tamil is accorded the status of a classical language and that over sixty million people worldwide speak Tamil, the RMRL presents itself as a significant institution in the world of research and scholarship.
In a bid to augment its already unique collection, the RMRL recently acquired gramophone records from the 1920 and 1930 from private collectors which supplement the existing gramophone song books available at the library. The collection has received and continues to receive generous donations from private collections, growing by almost 50 percent in the last decade.
The RMRL's collection, sought after by scholars in India and elsewhere around the world, is not its sole strength. The library's staff is world class, having been trained in premier institutions around the world and having adopted the latest in library techniques that its resources allow.
The Roja Muthiah Research Library Trust (RMRLT), Chennai, established the Indus Research Centre (IRC) in January 2007 for undertaking scientific investigations into various aspects of the Indus or Harappan Civilisation, especially the Indus Scripts, which still remains undeciphered. Dr. Iravatham Mahadevan, a well known researcher in the Indus Scripts, [4] is the Honorary Consultant to the Centre,[ needs update ] which is open to all bona fide scholars who wish to undertake research in this field.
The Indus Civilization flourished in the Bronze Age, approximately between 3100 and 1700 BCE. The civilization is famous for its large, well-planned urban complexes like Mohenjodara and Harappa (now in Pakistan), and Lothal, Kalibangan, Dholavira and hundreds of other large and small settlements in India, spread over a very large area extending up to Daimabad in the Godavari Valley in Deccan.
The discoveries of Neolithic artifacts in South India bearing Indus Script-like characters has kindled the interest of south India and Tamil scholars who are especially interested in exploring the possibilities of deciphering the Indus Script, which would reveal the linguistic and cultural affinities of the Harappan people.
IRC is intended as a forum for scientific investigations without any ideological bias. The collections at IRC include computerized data and files and card catalogues gifted by Iravatham Mahadevan, collection of Dr.Gift Siromoney on this subject donated by his wife Dr.Rani Siromoney, and other books, monographs and research papers collected from various sources in India and abroad. IRC is in the process of building an exhaustive specialized library covering the Indus Civilization in general, and the Indus Script, in particular.
Harappa is an archaeological site in Pakistan, about 25 km (16 mi) north of Sahiwal. The Bronze Age Harappan civilisation, now more often called the Indus Valley Civilisation, is named after the site, which takes its name from a modern village near the former course of the Ravi River, which now runs 8 km (5.0 mi) to the north. The core of the Harappan civilisation extended over a large area, from Gujarat in the south, across Sindh and Rajasthan and extending into Punjab and Haryana. Numerous sites have been found outside the core area, including some as far east as Uttar Pradesh and as far west as Sutkagen-dor on the Makran coast of Balochistan, not far from Iran.
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning an area from much of Pakistan, to northeast Afghanistan, and northwestern India. The civilisation flourished both in the alluvial plain of the Indus River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers that once coursed in the vicinity of the Ghaggar-Hakra, a seasonal river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.
The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley Script, is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not they constituted a writing system used to record a Harappan language, any of which are yet to be identified. Despite many attempts, the 'script' has not yet been deciphered, but efforts are ongoing. There is no known bilingual inscription to help decipher the script, which shows no significant changes over time. However, some of the syntax varies depending upon location.
Navaratna Srinivasa Rajaram was an Indian academic.He is notable for propounding the "Indigenous Aryans" hypothesis, asserting that the Vedic period was extremely advanced from a scientific view-point, and claiming of having deciphered the Indus script. Academics find his scholarship to be composed of dishonest polemics in service of a communal agenda.
Asko Parpola is a Finnish Indologist, current professor emeritus of South Asian studies at the University of Helsinki. He specializes in Sindhology, specifically the study of the Indus script.
Dholavira is an archaeological site at Khadirbet in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District, in the state of Gujarat in western India, which has taken its name from a modern-day village 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) south of it. This village is 165 km (103 mi) from Radhanpur. Also known locally as Kotada timba, the site contains ruins of a city of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. Earthquakes have repeatedly affected Dholavira, including a particularly severe one around 2600 BC.
Tamilakam was the geographical region inhabited by the ancient Tamil people, covering the southernmost region of the Indian subcontinent. Tamilakam covered today's Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Lakshadweep and southern parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Traditional accounts and the Tolkāppiyam referred to these territories as a single cultural area, where Tamil was the natural language and permeated the culture of all its inhabitants. The ancient Tamil country was divided into kingdoms. The best known among them were the Cheras, Cholas, Pandyans and Pallavas. During the Sangam period, Tamil culture began to spread outside Tamilakam. Ancient Tamil settlements were also established in Sri Lanka and the Maldives (Giravarus).
The Edakkal caves are two natural caves at a remote location at Edakkal, 25 km (15.5 mi) from Kalpetta in the Wayanad district of Kerala in India. They lie 1,200 m (3,900 ft) above sea level on Ambukutty Mala, near an ancient trade route connecting the high mountains of Mysore to the ports of the Malabar Coast. Inside the caves are pictorial writings believed to date to at least 6,000 BCE, from the Neolithic man, indicating the presence of a prehistoric settlement in this region. The Stone Age carvings of Edakkal are rare and are the only known examples from South India besides those of Shenthurini, Kollam, also in Kerala. The cave paintings of Shenthurini (Shendurney) forests in Kerala are of the Mesolithic era.
Tamil-Brahmi, also known as Tamili or Damili, was a variant of the Brahmi script in southern India. It was used to write inscriptions in the early form of Old Tamil. The Tamil-Brahmi script has been paleographically and stratigraphically dated between the third century BCE and the first century CE, and it constitutes the earliest known writing system evidenced in many parts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Sri Lanka. Tamil Brahmi inscriptions have been found on cave entrances, stone beds, potsherds, jar burials, coins, seals, and rings.
Devaneya Pavanar was an Indian scholar who wrote over 35 research volumes on Tamil language and literature. Additionally, he was a staunch proponent of the "Pure Tamil movement" and initiated the Etymological Dictionary Project primarily to bring out the roots of Tamil words and their connections and ramifications with Nostratic studies.
Iravatham Mahadevan was an Indian epigraphist and civil servant, known for his decipherment of Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and for his expertise on the epigraphy of the Indus Valley civilisation.
The Dravidian peoples, Dravidian-speakers or Dravidians, are an ethnolinguistic group of ethnic groups native to South Asia who speak Dravidian languages and share Dravidian culture. There are around 250 million native speakers of Dravidian languages. Dravidian speakers form the majority of the population of South India and are natively found in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Dravidian peoples are also present in Singapore, Mauritius, Malaysia, France, South Africa, Myanmar, East Africa, the Caribbean, and the United Arab Emirates through recent migration.
Sembiyankandiyur is an archaeological site in Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu, India.
The Harappan language is the unknown language or languages of the Bronze Age Harappan civilization. The Harappan script has long defied attempts to read it, and therefore the language remains unknown. The language being unattested in any readable contemporary source, hypotheses regarding its nature are reduced to purported loanwords and substratum influence, the substratum in Vedic Sanskrit and a few terms recorded in Sumerian cuneiform, in conjunction with analyses of the undeciphered Indus script.
Sundararaj Theodore Baskaran is a film historian and wildlife conservationist from Tamil Nadu, India.
R. Balakrishnan is a bureaucrat, author, researcher, poet and has written several books in Tamil. He is a former Indian Administrative Service officer. Currently he serves as the chief advisor to the Chief Minister of Odisha state government.
The World Classical Tamil Conference 2010 was an international gathering of scholars, poets, political leaders and celebrities with an interest in Tamil people, the Tamil language and Tamil literature. It was held in Coimbatore between 23 June and 27 June 2010 with an expenditure of more than 500 Crores.
Megalithic markings, megalithic graffiti marks, megalithic symbols or non-Brahmi symbols are markings found on mostly potsherds found in Central India, South India and Sri Lanka during the Megalithic Iron Age in India. A number of scholars have tried to decipher the symbols since 1878, and currently there is no consensus as to whether they constitute undeciphered writing or graffiti or symbols without any syllabic or alphabetic meaning.
Indus–Mesopotamia relations are thought to have developed during the second half of 3rd millennium BCE, until they came to a halt with the extinction of the Indus valley civilization after around 1900 BCE. Mesopotamia had already been an intermediary in the trade of lapis lazuli between the Indian subcontinent and Egypt since at least about 3200 BCE, in the context of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations.
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