French Institute of Pondicherry

Infobox University
name = Institut Français de Pondichéry


established = 20 March 1955
director = Dr. Jean-Pierre Muller
type = French Government
city = Puducherry | state = Puducherry
campus = Urban
country = India | undergrad =
postgrad =
faculty =
free_label =
free =
mascot =
website = [http://www.ifpindia.org/-en-.html]

French Institute of Pondicherry (fr:"Institut Français de Pondichéry") was established as a result of framework of the Cessation Treaty of French Territories in India, and was officially inaugurated on 20 March 1955. The Institute is a part of the network of research centers [http://www.ifpindia.org/images/CentresMAE.jpg] organized by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and its existence is guaranteed by an international treaty, namely, the Treaty of Cession of French Territories in India, signed between India and France in 1956.

The activities

The Institute’s mission is three-pronged:

# Indology
# Social sciences
# Ecology

The facilities

The Institute is housed in a 19th century building, recently renovated and the premises cover an area of 3000 square meter.

Research departments

The Department of Indology focuses its attention on a number of the historical keys to classical India, namely, its religions, its literature and its languages (Sanskrit and Tamil) in order to better understand the foundations of modern India;

The Department of Social Sciences promotes research on the major questions of society and on the relations between human societies and their environment: the social and political dynamics of healthcare traditions, the sociological aspects of HIV transmission, the health problems related to the spread of transmittable diseases, the social dimensions of the microfinance, the territorial transformations related to economic liberalization, the dynamics of Indian megalopolises, the social management of water, the demographic trends and social mobility and the diffusion of new technologies.

The Department of Ecology conducts research on biodiversity and is particularly concerned with the functioning of fragile ecosystems (forests, mangroves), considering man as an important parameter in their evolution and the palaeoenvironments of South India - tracing climatic and vegetation changes with biological and geological markers.

The manuscripts

With respect to its branch of research in Indology, the French Institute of Pondicherry has a collection of 8,600 Hindu religious manuscripts and similar records, forming part of India’s National Mission for Manuscripts. Comprising 8,187 ancient palm-leaf bundles, 360 paper codices and 1,144 recent paper transcripts, it is the largest collection of manuscripts primarily transmitting texts of the Saiva Siddhanta tradition of Hinduism. The collection was started in 1955 by the institute's founder-director, Jean Filliozat, who desired to explain the Hindu temple and what happens in it. The manuscripts were gathered from private collections of temples, priests and monasteries across South India and brought to the institute with the intention of preserving, transcribing and eventually translating them. Four volumes of a catalog describing in detail the contents of 4,000 texts transmitted in 475 of the palm-leaf bundles were published in 1986, 1987, 1990 and 2002, respectively. Cataloging has continued using flatbed scanning and digital photography technology in conjunction with a computerized database.

Contents of the collection

* Canonical texts of Saivism (Saiva Agamas, also known as Tantras) "1,900 codices"

* Mantra/ritual manuals "1,890"

* Devotional hymns and legends of holy places (stotra/mahatmya) "1,360"

* Hindu astrology (Jyotisha) "435"

* The literary epic about Rama (Ramayana) "192"

* Other Sanskrit epics, myths and legends (Puranas) "230"

* Traditional South Indian medicine "198"

* Vedas "187"

* Literary works in Sanskrit "160"

* Tamil devotional literature "1,350"

Recognitions

The collection was registered in the World Memories [http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=19320&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html] of the UNESCO in July 2005 and was declared a national treasure of India by the Indian government. The institute was also declared a "Manuscripts Resource Centre" in 2004 in recognition of the valuable collection.

Collections

* Pollen reference slide collection ~"22,000" slides falling in "15,000" tropical plant species.

* Library collection consists of "9000 books", "300 theses", over "1000 articles" and "800 journals" of which "260" are received currently.

* Herbarium is internationally recognized and indexed index Herbariorum [http://sweetgum.nybg.org/ih/herbarium.php?irn=124579] housing nearly "23,000" specimens.

* Photographs nearly 136,000 and are unique resource for visual information about South India in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly its temple art.

* Maps nearly 3,000 maps on India and South and Southeast Asia, around 1,200 topographic maps of the Anglo-Saxon scale (1 inch/1mile) dating from the first half of the 20th century and an equal number of topographic maps at the metric scale (most of them 1/50,000 and nearly 200 sheets at 1/250,000) obtained from the Survey of India and covering most of the Indian subcontinent. Around 500 thematic maps of other South and Southeast Asian countries (vegetation, soil, geology, meteorology, etc.) at highly varying scales, mainly from the 50’s, are also preserved in French institute.

External links

* [http://www.ifpindia.org/-en-.html IFP - official website]
* [http://meaindia.nic.in/treatiesagreement/1956/chap133.htm Indian Ministry for External Affairs - 1956 Treaty]
* [http://intachpondicherry.org/ INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage)]