Knowledge of the royals
Starting as Thanjavur’s Nayak king’s royal library, the Saraswathi Mahal Library is the hub of the region’s glorious past. Maratha rulers captured Thanjavur in 1675 and until 1855, the Royal Library was developed.
Serfoji, the most notable Maratha king of the region took special interest in enriching the culture of the Royal Library. He was an eminent scholar in several branches of arts and learning. It was German Reverent Schwartz who influenced Serfoji to develop a keen interest in studies. Serfoji employed several priests to collect, buy, and copy a humungous work from all renowned Sanskrit Centres of Northern India and other far-off areas.
Since 1918, the state of Tamil Nadu holds the possession of the Saraswathi Mahal Library. Officially, the library is named in remembrance of the Great Royal Maratha Patron.
The written treasure troves
One can witness the presence of rare collections of Palm-leaf manuscripts and papers in Hindi, Tamil, English, Marathi, Telugu, and a few other local languages that define India’s rich cultural and diverse heritage. The collection counts to some 60,000 units. Nevertheless, to make sure that people stay tuned to India’s rare manuscripts, one can see a lot of enthusiasm from the library for publishing support. These manuscripts and volumes are preserved in microfilms.
The majority of the manuscripts here are written in Sanskrit as Grantha, Nadinagari, Devanagari, Tamil, and Telugu reflecting titles for music, literature, and medicine. Besides, the library is also home to around 3076 Marathi manuscripts coming in straight from the South Indian Maharashtrians belonging to the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Mostly, the Marathi manuscripts are on paper. However, few were later re-written on palm leaves in Telugu. The library also has 846 manuscripts mostly written on palm leaves, and 22 Persian and Urdu manuscripts belonging to the 19th-century collection. There’s a lot to dig in for the Ayurveda lovers as the library holds several medical records including case studies and interviews of the patients. These Ayurvedic manuscripts are available under the Dhanvantari section.
