Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts in the French institute of Pondicherry, vol. 3: Mss. 276-3 75.

• Author: ROCHER, LUDO
• Position: Review

Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts in the French institute of Pondicherry, vol. 3: Mss. 276-3 75. By V. VARADAcHARI. Publications de 1'Institut francais d'Indologie, vol. 70.3. Pondicherry: INSTITUT FRANCAIS DE PONDICHERY, 1990. Pp. xv + 483.

This is the third volume in a series devoted to the description of manuscripts preserved at the French Institute in Pondicherry. The first volume (Mss 1-115) was published in 1986, the second MSS 116-275) in 1987. Like the third, the earlier volumes were edited by V. Varadachari, with the help of various other scholars; each time the editor provides a substantial introduction. The first volume contains a longer, the second a shorter preface by N. R. Bhatt.

Ever since the French Institute at Pondicherry was established in 1955, one of their goals has been to edit Agama texts, more particularly Saivagamas. (If my calculation is correct, from 1961 until today at least nine volumes of the Institute's publication series have been devoted to Agamas. most of these by N. R. Bhatt.) To do so they made a major effort to acquire manuscripts. "Most of these manuscripts were in the private collections of the priests-gurukkals or desikars. As a result we have now in our collection, after 31 years, about 12000 palmleaf manuscripts mostly in grantha script, some in Malayalam, Telugu, Nandinagari and Tulu scripts" (Bhatt, vol. 1, p. v). The fact that the manuscripts were acquired as collections...