THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Almost three years back, when the digitisation of ‘mathilakom’ documents (related to Sree Padmanabha Swamy Temple) was taken up by the Archives Department, no one sounded upbeat about it. Other than the Archives men and a couple of historians, it became nobody’s concern. But with the Lord turning out to be the owner of a treasure trove, the interest in ‘mathilakom’ documents has suddenly shot up. However, this time, the Archives Department is a bit low on enthusiasm considering the fact that its demand for transliterators is still pending before the State Government . The ‘mathilakom’ documents are mostly ‘churunas’, scrolls of palm-leaf documents in bundles of loose leaves. They are written in an ancient language which is a mixture of the scripts such as ‘Vattezhuthu’, ‘Kolezhuthu’, ‘Malayanma’ and Malayalam. Deciphering them is like puzzle decoding, which only the brightest of minds trained in transliteration can achieve.Historians like M G Sasibhooshan and K N Panickar point out that without transliteration, the possibility of the details pertaining to the vaults in the temple and their contents, contained in one of the ‘mathilakom’ documents, would never see light. More than 11,000 such ‘churunas’ are preserved in the Central Archives near Fort, and some 3,000 ‘churunas’ among them are ‘mathilakom’ documents. The Archives Department had chosen seven students, who had passed from the University College, Kariavattom, in Linguistics, given them in-house training in transliteration and engaged them in the task of creating an index of the documents. Initially, the transliteration, translation and digitisation were moving hand-in-hand; later, with the first job turning out to be more cumbersome, the Department went ahead with the digitisation of the ‘churunas’. And transliteration fell into a slow pace. With the contract period of the students getting over some months back, the whole exercise has now come to a standstill. "Earlier, there were expert transliterators who were devoted to the job full time. Until lately, they were called in for minor services to the Department. But then, we began picking up candidates from the PSC list. It has created a dearth of expert hands,’’ said Gopalakrishnan, Superintendent of Central Archives. It is known that the Government is pondering over a solution. "The Government has shown a positive approach to the digitisation project and we hope to have transliterators very soon in our service so that we can resume the transliteration and complete the digitisation. Our long-term aim is to publish the documents online too,’’ said J Rejikumar, Director of Archives Department. The renovation of the Central Archives, which was the erstwhile Travancore Central Prison, is also on the cards, though it has been on hold for several months now. Last year, the Department had planned its renovation using Tourism funds, but nothing materialised. Now that the office and its dark shelves seating the abundant history of a bygone era have gained global attention, it is up to the State Government to shed lethargy and help in the process of discovering the real history of Travancore.
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