Hyderabad :

Writer, poet and multi-talented academic tutor at Sunderland University in the UK, Ragasudha Vinjamuri, has completed transcribing ancient palm-leaf folios in Telugu.

The palm-leaf folios have been in the British Library since 1942 and, after a three-year effort, Ragasudha completed the transcription providing a new insight into the life and work of the twelfth century theologian and philosopher Acharya Ramanuja.

The work, in the form of Satakam, will be released in the British parliament on May 10 on the occasion of the 999th birth anniversary of Ramanujacharya. British parliament member Bob Blackman will preside over the function.

Ragasudha is a writer, poet, journalist and founder of Sanskruthi Centre for Cultural Excellence. She has also popularised folk dances such as Koya and Lambadi to a wider audience in the UK.

Ragasudha came across the palm-leaf folios through the curator of South Indian languages at British Library, Nalini Persad, who asked the former to look through the folios.

Some folios were badly damaged and needed Ragasudha to extensively research and identify the missing content from those broken folios. She could ascertain the author of the work with the help of scholars in India. It took more than three years for completing the entire transcription. “I am glad to transcribe the palm-leaf folios that were in the possession of British Library, ascertained by scholars and historians to be about 300 years old,” she said. Vinjamuri now wants to bring into light some mythological characters that received little attention.

Ragasudha researched various texts and puranas and is now planning to bring out the story of characters like Lord Krishna’s daughter, Lord Shiva’s daughter and King Dasaratha’s daughter in dance form, titled ‘Unknown Daughters’.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / by Express News Service / April 11th, 2016