அனாந்த ரங்கம் பிள்ளையன் டயரி குறிப்புகள் -படிக்கவேண்டிய வரலாற்று பதிவு

ANANDARANGAPPILLAI V-NATKKURIPPU — Angirasa Aandu 1752-53 (Tamil): Orsay M. Gopalakichanane; Natramizh Pathippagam, M-55/12, MIG Flats, I Avenue Extension, Indira Nagar, Adyar, Chennai-600020. Rs. 230.

Anandarangam Pillai's diaries written in the mid-18th century constitute a very important landmark in Tamil cultural history. The detailed and colourful diary entries that Anandarangam Pillai had maintained for nearly three decades, and running into a few thousand pages, have been mined by historians, literary specialists, linguists and novelists over the last century with exciting results. The historian C.S. Srinivasachari even described him as the `Pepys of French India'.

Publishing history

Ironically though, the diaries that Anandarangam Pillai maintained for the most part in Tamil were first published in extracts in French translation in 1894. Later, in the first decades of the 20th century, the Madras Government made efforts to copy the Tamil diaries and published them in English translation. Even though Tamil writers such as V.V.S. Iyer demonstrated their awareness of the existence of the diaries it was only in the late 1940s that the Tamil originals began to be published — nearly two centuries after their original composition.

The quirky publishing history does not stop here. Copies were made of the diaries in the mid-19th century, under the supervision of Edouard Ariel, while the original itself has since been lost.

Now, Orsay M. Gopalakichnane, an engineer by profession hailing from Pondicherry and settled in France, has compared the published Tamil version and English translation with the copy available in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and has come up with some startling revelations. He estimates that as much 30 per cent of the copy in the national library of France is missing in the available versions and that there are many wrong readings.

To rectify this situation, Gopalakichnane has embarked on publishing a new edition, which includes the missing portions, which he has italicised in this edition for easy identification. This is an unenviable and daunting task.

Apart from the style that Anandarangam Pillai used (modern Tamil prose had not yet developed then) teeming with French words accommodated into Tamil, the orthography of the various copyists is an editor's nightmare. Gopalakichnane has also provided glosses in parenthesis for clarity and a very comprehensive index has been placed at the end.

Three eventful years

The meticulousness of the editor should be evident to any careful reader and the volume is a great resource for the specialist. Despite the enormous effort put in by the editor, he has modestly pointed out the various shortcomings of the edition. Given the magnitude of the task — impossible to accomplish by a single hand — he has wisely chosen three eventful Tamil years, `prajorpathi' (1751-52), `angirsa' (1752-53) and `srimuga' (1753-54) for his new extended edition which he calls `v(irintha) natkurippu'. While the first of the volumes was published two years ago, this volume is the second; the third is expected to be out soon.

It is a pressing scholarly need to publish a reliable edition of the complete diaries of Anandarangam Pillai based on the exemplary model provided by Gopalakichnane.

A team of competent scholars with adequate institutional support should embark on this project, which is sure to enrich scholarship.