29-Mar-2024

GOVERNMENT OF TAMIL NADUGovernment Oriental Manuscripts Library, CHENNAI

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From such small beginnings, the GOVERNMENT ORIENTAL MANUSCRIPTS LIBRARY, MADRAS, has grown to its present dimensions and it possesses 71180 manuscripts in the following languages:

Language Palm leaf Paper manuscripts Total
Tamil 10783 5775 16558
Sanskrit 38282 11473 49755
Telugu 806 1426 2232
Kannada 182 72 254
Marathi -- 967 967
Urdu -- 184 184
Arabic -- 407 407
Persian -- 1396 1396
Oriya, Pali, Sinhala, Burmese 127 -- 127
Local records -- 434 434
Total 50180 22134 72314

Consequent on the formation of linguistic States in our country about 7,000 manuscripts in Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam were transferred to Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala respectively. Apart from this 25373 printed books are available for reference in the Library as given below

Language Printed books
Tamil 5442 (3912)
Sanskrit 7320
Telugu 1875
Kannada 700
Marathi 137
Malayalam 444
Arabic 230
Perrsian 265
Urdu 705
English 6926
European Languages 194
Hindi 130
Descriptive Catalogues 805
Dictionaries 182
Bengali 18
Total 25373