Six Odia Serials From Early 12th Century Digitised By Cuttack’s Ravenshaw University

Cuttack: The Ravenshaw University’s Centre for Translation and Digital Humanities has completed digitising six regional Odia language serials from the early 12th century.

The serials are ‘Baikuntha Bhikari’, ‘Puribasi’, ‘The Ratnakar’, ‘Utkal Barta’, ‘The Swadesha Lakshmi’, and ‘The Light’. The scanned images of the serials and metadata, including the translation of the content, are now being uploaded to the university’s Kanika library e-resource server.

“These possess a rare archival value and their digitisation will help scholars to better study the varied nature of Odia print culture during that period of time,” said Urmishree Bedamatta, an English faculty member who is also the coordinator of the centre, told TNIE.

Notably, the centre took up the task of digitising the rare productions kept inside ‘almirahs’ in two rooms  of the seven-decade-old Utkal Gaurab Madhusudan library on the premises of Sriramachandra Bhawan in Cuttack, under the South Asia Materials Project (SAMP) of Centre for Research Libraries, Chicago, which provided Rs 3.5 lakh for it.

Apart from the over 5,000 rare documents, newspapers, books, documents, manuscripts, weeklies, periodicals and epics, at the library maintained by Utkal Sahitya Samaj, the centre is also digitising rare literary works and manuscripts donated to Ravenshaw University. “Digitisation work of many rare works from the Odisha State Museum along with around 40 palm leaf manuscripts received from individuals from different parts of the state is on,” she added.