TIMES OF INDIA Front Page News on 22-4-2005 Hyd Edition

Rare manuscripts sent to US illegally

By K Sreedhar Rao & K R Raghavan/TNN

Hyderabad/Tirupati: Some 1,500 precious talapatrams (palm leaf manuscripts)
containing some of the compositions of 15th century Telugu poet-saint Tallapaka
Annamacharya have gone missing from the Tirumala temple since they were
illegally sent to the US, apparently to have them digitised.

The manuscripts were in the custody of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD),
which administers the temple. Ostensibly to store them in a more permanent
format, the TTD's central library was told to hand over a bundle of about 1,500
talapatrams to one 'Sriram of Sanfransisco' (sic) in January 2004.

Documents available with The Times of India show that the librarian handed over
the bundle on Jan 17, 2004 after taking an acknowledgement, which reads "the
palm leaves bundle is being taken over as per the directions of the executive
officer, TTD (Ajeya Kallam) during the national conference on digital library
held at Bangalore on January 15, 2004." The manuscripts have not been returned
since, and there is no trace of them. TTD officials are now clueless about the
exact number of manuscripts given to 'Sriram of Sanfransisco'. Sources said the
TTD authorities chose to send the talapatrams to the US without seeking the
approval of the TTD board of trustees or the Union government. According to
Section 2(A)(1) (iii) and (iv) of the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act 1972,
talapatrams are antiquities. Export of such antiquities without the permission
of the central government or an authorised agency is prohibited under provision
3 of the law. The talapatrams contain some compositions by Annamacharya and his
commentaries on the Puranas and the Vedas. During his lifetime, the composer
penned more than 32,000 songs in praise of Lord Venkateswara, the presiding
deity of the Tirumala temple. While many of them have been lost, some 12,000
have been found and preserved, some in the form of copper plate inscriptions
commissioned by contemporary kings. Apart from the songs of devotion, the
compositions contain rich information about contemporary society.

Some of the manuscripts now lost in the US had been discovered during
excavations in and around Madanapalle in Chittoor district and contained
information pertaining to the reign of the Vijayanagar king Sri Krishnadevaraya.
The government has conducted an inquiry into the episode but the report is yet
to be submitted. Endowments minister M Satyanarayana Rao was not available for
his reaction to this episode. Principal secretary (revenue) J P Murthy who deals
with the subject was reluctant to say anything on the issue. When contacted,
Ajeya Kallam, the then TTD executive officer, told The Times of India that the
talapatrams were being digitised and a search was on for suitable equipment to
scan them. "They are not very valuable. The talapatrams will be restored to the
TTD,'' he said.