Ancient manuscripts found in farmer’s house

Tirupati: A 15 bundles of manuscripts having antic value were found in house of a farmer in Allamadugu village, near Devalampeta, 30 km from here on Wednesday. The farmer, Narayana Reddy, also a former village head (Maniam) found the bundles wrapped in a sack on the attic when he was cleaning of his house as he was renovating it.

After opening the sack, he found 150 manuscripts including one on Manthra and Thanthra with illustrations while the rest pertained to Village and temple records. He informed about the finding of the manuscripts to his friend Damodar Reddy who is working as a government school heamaster.

Damodar in turn informed the director of the SV University Oriental Research Institute director V Venkata Ramana Reddy. Ramana Reddy along with the experts in the institute visited the village and took charge of the manuscripts for preserving them in the institute.

Ramana Reddy said that the 15 bundles of manuscript, containing about 2000 leaves, in Tamil and Telugu, were written in old style pertained to British period and were 150-200 years old. He said one of the bundle in colour which is on Manthra and Thanthra was of immense value and added that they would soon take up study of the entire manuscripts.

The 80 year old Oriental Research Institute (ORI)is having about 65000 rare manuscripts, some of them ancient, of different languages and scripts.