Announcement of digital online Saiva Siddhanta library

[Mahony, William K.]

Dear Colleagues,
 
The Muktabodha Indological Research Institute, the Institut français de
Pondichéry/French Institute of Pondicherry and the École française
d'Extrême-Orient/French School of Asian Studies announce the catalogue and
electronic publication of more than 2000 liturgical, theological and
philosophical texts, mostly from the tradition of the Saiva Siddhanta.
 
These 1144 paper Devanagari transcripts, consisting of over 200,000 pages,
were commissioned or copied by scholars of the IFP and the EFEO over a
period of more than thirty years beginning in the 1940¹s, and later
catalogued by the IFP. Muktabodha¹s team photographed the majority of these
texts, integrated them into a searchable online catalogue and processed them
for Internet publication.
 
The transcripts are a core component of the IFP¹s "Shaiva Manuscripts in
Pondicherry" collection, which has been placed on the UNESCO ³Memory of the
World² Register in response to an application jointly submitted by the IFP,
the EFEO, and India¹s National Mission for Manuscripts. This is the largest
collection of Saiva Siddhanta texts in the world.
 
We are pleased to make this resource available to researchers free of charge
via the Internet. 
 
To enter the catalogue and on-line library of this collection and
Muktabodha¹s digital library as a whole, please go to
<http://www.muktabodhalib.org/digital_library.htm>
 
For information on the IFP's ³Shaiva Manuscripts in Pondicherry² collection,
please go to <http://www.ifpindia.org/-Manuscripts-.html>
 
 
Sincerely,
 
Dr. William K. Mahony
President, Muktabodha Indological Research Institute
Professor and Chair of Religion
Davidson College
 
With:
 
Dr. Jean-Pierre Muller
Director, Institut français de Pondichéry/French Institute of Pondicherry
 
Dr. Dominic Goodall
Head of the Pondicherry Centre of the École française
d'Extrême-Orient/French School of Asian Studies