French Institute of Pondicherry (Puducherry, India)
Name: French Institute of Pondicherry
Address: 11, Saint Louis Street, Puducherry - 605001 map
City: Puducherry map
State: Tamil Nadu
Country: India
Tel: +91 (0413) 233-4168
Fax: +91 (0413) 233-9534
Email: ifpinfo@ifpindia.org
Founded in: 1955
Address: 11, Saint Louis Street, Puducherry - 605001 map
City: Puducherry map
State: Tamil Nadu
Country: India
Tel: +91 (0413) 233-4168
Fax: +91 (0413) 233-9534
Email: ifpinfo@ifpindia.org
Founded in: 1955
The library of the French Institute of Pondicherry is a multi-disciplinary research library. Its collection was started with the founding of the Institute in 1955, and was constituted over the years with the active collaboration of the Institute's researchers. Today the library has a rich and varied collection of books and journals relating to the cultural knowledge and heritage, contemporary social dynamics and environment and sustainable development, of India, and more generally of South Asia.As of today, the collection consists of 60 000 books, 300 theses, over 1000 articles and 800 journals of which 260 are received currently. Between 1500 and 2000 books are added to the collection every year.
Manuscripts
Two large collections of palm-leaf and paper manuscripts that transmit principally Sanskrit, Tamil and Manipravalam texts are preserved in the French institutions of research in the South Indian Town of Pondicherry. The major collection is that of the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP), which comprises 8187 palm-leaf bundles, 360 paper codices and 1144 recent paper transcripts (i.e. post-1950 paper manuscripts commissioned or copied by employees of the IFP), which are now on-line.At the instigation of the IFP's founder director, the manuscripts began to be collected from every area of the Tamil-speaking South of India (see history of the Collection) and the collection contains texts of every branch of precolonial Indian learning. But nearly half of the material relates to one of the major theistic traditions of India, that concerned with the worship of the God Siva (see rough breakdown of contents). It is in fact the largest collection in the world of manuscripts of texts of the Saiva Siddhanta, a religious tradition that in the 10th century CE was spread right across the Indian subcontinent and beyond, as far as Cambodia in the East. This tradition long represented the mainstream of tantric doctrine and worship and appears to have influenced every Indian theistic tradition. Its surviving texts, the majority of them unpublished, range from the 6th century CE to the colonial period.In recognition of its importance the collection of SHAIVA MANUSCRIPTS IN PONDICHERRY has in 2005 been deemed a UNESCO "Memory of the World" Collection. This has given a boost to our on-going efforts to the huge task of completing a catalogue of the whole collectionThe 1662 palm-leaf bundles of the Pondicherry Centre of the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) belong to a single collection from the far South of India (Tirunelveli District). More than a third of this material (about 650 bundles) relates to the cult of the Hindu God Vishnu and at least 60 of these Vaishnava manuscripts transmit texts that have never been published.Both collections are conserved in air-conditioned spaces. Many of the publications in the field of Indology are the fruits of working over many years with our extremely rich manuscript resources.The IFP's collection comprises of 8187 palm-leaf bundles, 360 old paper codices and 1144 paper transcripts (C20th) and the EFEO's of 1662 palm-leaf bundles, wich amounts to 11353 manuscripts in total.
Photo Archives
The photo archives of the French Institute of Pondicherry began to develop in 1956 and the collection is still being constantly enriched, fulfilling the will of their founder, Jean Filliozat, to build a database for the study of religious art in South India. Among the persons who have worked with or after him on the development of the photo archives, it is necessary to mention Françoise L'Hernault, a specialist of South Indian iconography, particularly of the Chola period, who worked for more than thirty years at the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO, P. Z Pattabiramin, close collaborator of J. Filliozat, V. Srinivasan, Research Assistant working with F. L'Hernault, and S. Natarajan, photographer with the IFP between 1975 and 1997.The photo archives of IFP now contain more than 136,000 photographs and are a unique resource for visual information about South India in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly its temple art. Among the richest to be found in these archives are images of stone sculptures, bronze statues, paintings, tower views, architectural details, wooden carvings on temple chariots, prehistoric rock-art painting, palaces, jewellery and carvings in ivory. Mention should also be made of its street-scapes of Pondicherry, much of whose colonial period architecture is under threat or has recently disappeared.This varied collection has material from the whole of Tamil Nadu (60% of the images), as well as from many parts of other Southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Monuments of major significance from other parts of India, such as Ajanta and Ellora, are also represented. The photographs are taken in large format (6cm x 6cm) on black and white negatives.
Maps
The Institute is presently endowed with a collection of nearly 3,000 maps on India and South and Southeast Asia, around 1,200 topographic maps of the Anglo-Saxon scale (1 inch/1mile) dating from the first half of the 20th century and an equal number of topographic maps at the metric scale (most of them 1/50,000 and nearly 200 sheets at 1/250,000) obtained from the Survey of India and covering most of the Indian subcontinent. Around 500 thematic maps of other South and Southeast Asian countries (vegetation, soil, geology, meteorology, etc.) at highly varying scales, mainly from the 50's, are also preserved here.About 100 recent satellite images (hard copy and in digitized form) covering mostly South India, have been assembled. These documents, gathered in the course of past and present projects, will henceforth constitute the primary sources of reference for researchers from various disciplines working at the Institute.A database of these cartographic documents maintained by the Geomatics laboratory is locally accessible through an interactive application using logical and geographic criteria.
Manuscripts
Two large collections of palm-leaf and paper manuscripts that transmit principally Sanskrit, Tamil and Manipravalam texts are preserved in the French institutions of research in the South Indian Town of Pondicherry. The major collection is that of the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP), which comprises 8187 palm-leaf bundles, 360 paper codices and 1144 recent paper transcripts (i.e. post-1950 paper manuscripts commissioned or copied by employees of the IFP), which are now on-line.At the instigation of the IFP's founder director, the manuscripts began to be collected from every area of the Tamil-speaking South of India (see history of the Collection) and the collection contains texts of every branch of precolonial Indian learning. But nearly half of the material relates to one of the major theistic traditions of India, that concerned with the worship of the God Siva (see rough breakdown of contents). It is in fact the largest collection in the world of manuscripts of texts of the Saiva Siddhanta, a religious tradition that in the 10th century CE was spread right across the Indian subcontinent and beyond, as far as Cambodia in the East. This tradition long represented the mainstream of tantric doctrine and worship and appears to have influenced every Indian theistic tradition. Its surviving texts, the majority of them unpublished, range from the 6th century CE to the colonial period.In recognition of its importance the collection of SHAIVA MANUSCRIPTS IN PONDICHERRY has in 2005 been deemed a UNESCO "Memory of the World" Collection. This has given a boost to our on-going efforts to the huge task of completing a catalogue of the whole collectionThe 1662 palm-leaf bundles of the Pondicherry Centre of the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) belong to a single collection from the far South of India (Tirunelveli District). More than a third of this material (about 650 bundles) relates to the cult of the Hindu God Vishnu and at least 60 of these Vaishnava manuscripts transmit texts that have never been published.Both collections are conserved in air-conditioned spaces. Many of the publications in the field of Indology are the fruits of working over many years with our extremely rich manuscript resources.The IFP's collection comprises of 8187 palm-leaf bundles, 360 old paper codices and 1144 paper transcripts (C20th) and the EFEO's of 1662 palm-leaf bundles, wich amounts to 11353 manuscripts in total.
Photo Archives
The photo archives of the French Institute of Pondicherry began to develop in 1956 and the collection is still being constantly enriched, fulfilling the will of their founder, Jean Filliozat, to build a database for the study of religious art in South India. Among the persons who have worked with or after him on the development of the photo archives, it is necessary to mention Françoise L'Hernault, a specialist of South Indian iconography, particularly of the Chola period, who worked for more than thirty years at the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO, P. Z Pattabiramin, close collaborator of J. Filliozat, V. Srinivasan, Research Assistant working with F. L'Hernault, and S. Natarajan, photographer with the IFP between 1975 and 1997.The photo archives of IFP now contain more than 136,000 photographs and are a unique resource for visual information about South India in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly its temple art. Among the richest to be found in these archives are images of stone sculptures, bronze statues, paintings, tower views, architectural details, wooden carvings on temple chariots, prehistoric rock-art painting, palaces, jewellery and carvings in ivory. Mention should also be made of its street-scapes of Pondicherry, much of whose colonial period architecture is under threat or has recently disappeared.This varied collection has material from the whole of Tamil Nadu (60% of the images), as well as from many parts of other Southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. Monuments of major significance from other parts of India, such as Ajanta and Ellora, are also represented. The photographs are taken in large format (6cm x 6cm) on black and white negatives.
Maps
The Institute is presently endowed with a collection of nearly 3,000 maps on India and South and Southeast Asia, around 1,200 topographic maps of the Anglo-Saxon scale (1 inch/1mile) dating from the first half of the 20th century and an equal number of topographic maps at the metric scale (most of them 1/50,000 and nearly 200 sheets at 1/250,000) obtained from the Survey of India and covering most of the Indian subcontinent. Around 500 thematic maps of other South and Southeast Asian countries (vegetation, soil, geology, meteorology, etc.) at highly varying scales, mainly from the 50's, are also preserved here.About 100 recent satellite images (hard copy and in digitized form) covering mostly South India, have been assembled. These documents, gathered in the course of past and present projects, will henceforth constitute the primary sources of reference for researchers from various disciplines working at the Institute.A database of these cartographic documents maintained by the Geomatics laboratory is locally accessible through an interactive application using logical and geographic criteria.