Collections | Digital Tamil Studies

S. J. V. Chelvanayakam Fonds

The fonds reflects Chelvanayakam’s career as a political leader of the Sri Lankan Tamil community, as well as documenting the daily operations of the Federal Party. The fonds documents important political events in Sri Lanka from the 1950s to the 1970s and provides witness to the struggles faced by Sri Lankan Tamils. The fonds also contains records relating to his family, background, and memorial material collected after his death by his wife, Emily Grace Chelvanayakam. The fonds is organized into three series and covers the periods of 1933-1937, 1939-1940, 1944-1988, with the bulk of the material being from the 1960s and 1970s. Personal records include correspondence, personal items, financial and estate documentation, and other material. Professional records include office files, party records, correspondence, and documentation. Memorial material includes posters, newspaper clippings, and a book of condolences. The digitized material is a selection of files from Series 2: Professional material. If you have question about the physical fonds, please contact UTSC Library Archives and Special Collections.

நாட்டுடைமையாக்கப்பட்ட மற்றும் பொது உரிம தமிழ் நூல்கள்

Tamil Nationalized and Public Domain Books Collection

The Tamil Nationalized and Public Domain Books Collection consist of more than 650 subvolumes (1100 works - 210,000 pages) of seminal Tamil works of the 20th century, spanning a range of subjects, including Tamil literature, folklore, grammar, history, politics, culture, religion, arts, science and technology. Further, the collection consists of dictionaries, lexicons, encyclopedias, and biographies. Pioneering and prominent Tamil writers represented in the collection include poet Bharathidasan, political writer Ve Saminatha Sarma, musicologist Abraham Pandithar, and technology historian A. Irakavan. Tamil Nadu government has released the vast majority of these works to the public domain. Thamizhmann publishers have compiled and published editions of these works over the past 30 years.

Tamil Encyclopedias

The Digital Tamil Encyclopedia Collection brings together digital versions of public domain Tamil encyclopedias to support easier access and use. The UTSC Library supported the digitization of the aṟiviyal kaḷañciyam (Science Encyclopedia) and the vāḻviyaṟ kaḷañciyam (Social Sciences/Humanities Encyclopedia).

Tamil Palm Leaf Manuscripts

The Digital Tamil Palm-Leaf Manuscripts Collection at the UTSC Library currently consists of 30 palm-leaf manuscripts (2599 pages). The sources were provided by Dr. Bala Sivakadadcham family, Prof. Ravi Thambi and Jeya family and Dr. Kirubakaran family from the local Tamil community. These physical manuscripts are originally from Sri Lanka, and are tentatively dated from the 1700s to 1900s by Dr. Bala Sivakadadcham. He further assisted in developing the preliminary descriptive metadata. The majority of the works are about Tamil medicine written in verse. The works also cover literature, astrology, and religion.

Brenda Beck Research Materials

Social Anthropologist Brenda Beck has dedicated her career exploring the folklore of Tamilnadu. In this collection are multiple works related to her research, kindly donated by Dr. Beck and made free for the public in digital form. Currently, the collection presents her theses, as well her retelling, animations, and graphic novels depicting the Land of Ponnivala epic, and photography and other source documents from her travels to Olappalayam in Tamil Nadu. Please note that this collection is in development. If you are interested in viewing additional materials from Brenda Beck's research collection, please contact us at dsu.utsc@utoronto.ca.

Legend of Ponnivala

This collection of graphic novels and short animations by Anthropologist Dr. Brenda E.F. Beck presents the Legend of Ponnivala Nadu, an epic sung by bards in the Tamil Nadu region of South India for centuries. The story covers three generations of a great farming family as they lay the foundations for a new land, facing hunger, rivalry, magic, and monsters.

Kongu Nadu Collection

Between December 1st, 1964 and August of 1966, Social Anthropologist Dr. Brenda Beck lived in the village of Olappalayam, 6 miles East of the town of Kangayam in Tamil Nadu. During this time, Dr. Beck collected a wealth of primary research materials with the assistance of research assistant, K. Sundaram of Olappalayam. This collection, curated and described in collaboration with a postdoctoral Fellow at UTSC (Shanmugapriya) makes available images, documents, and digitized recordings describing festivals, ceremonies, and rituals. In particular, the collection of folksongs (துதிப் பாட்டு, ஊர்த்தொகைப்பாடல், ஒப்பாரி பாடல், வீர பாடல் and பக்தி பாடல் ) and folk tales (குலமரபுக் கதை, சாதியக் கதை, நீதி விளக்கக் கதை, நீதி விளக்கக் கதை, and பழங்கதை) are distinctive to the region. Together, this collection provides a window into the cultural landscape of Kongu Nadu in the mid 1960s.

Tamil Web Archive

The Tamil Web Archive contains archived websites deemed at potential risk and/or of particular interest to the Tamil speaking community.

Digital Tamil Studies

This collection stewards documents and recordings related to the Tamil Digital Studies Project, a UTSC based initiative to develop an intellectually focused digital content hub that will encourage Tamil studies scholarship, and enable collaboration with faculty members for the purpose of mentoring and teaching skills that relate to best practices involved in the building and use of digital archival materials. This initiative also seeks to promote the intersection of Tamil computing and scholarship, and the development of the Digital Tamil Studies community.