NIIMH Hyderabad trains scholars to read Telugu Ayurvedic palm-leaf manuscripts

A three-day workshop to train researchers in reading, transcribing and editing old Telugu manuscripts on Ayurveda ended on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, at the National Institute of Indian Medical Heritage (NIIMH) in Hyderabad. The workshop, held from October 26 to 28, was organised by the institute's Centre of Excellence in Medico-Historical Studies and Indian Medical Heritage under the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), which works under the Ministry of Ayush. It focused on medical knowledge preserved in Telugu palm-leaf and paper manuscripts.

Much of what is known about Ayurveda's history sits not in printed books but in manuscripts: texts written by hand on dried palm leaves or on paper, often centuries old, kept in temples, libraries, monasteries and family collections. Many are in regional languages and old scripts that few people can now read. They decay with heat, damp and insects, and once a leaf crumbles its contents are lost. Telugu manuscripts are an important part of this record in the southern states.

Reading such a text is specialist work. A transcriber has to recognise old letter forms and the scribe's habits, then copy the text faithfully into a modern script. "Critical editing" goes a step further: the editor compares different copies of the same work, notes where they differ and prepares the most reliable version, with notes. Without trained people, manuscripts can be scanned and stored but not actually read or studied. That is the gap workshops of this kind are meant to fill. According to the report of the event, the organisers described it as building the skills researchers need for the systematic study and preservation of India's medical heritage, and Dr Srikanth spoke of the need to bring out the therapeutic knowledge held in these old texts.

It is worth keeping belief and evidence apart. A remedy described in a manuscript is a record of what physicians of the time practised and believed; it is not proof that the remedy works. Editing and publishing such texts makes them available to historians and scientists, who can then study and, where appropriate, test them. Any health claim would still need modern research.

The institute also runs the Ayush Manuscript Advanced Repository (AMAR), an online catalogue that, according to a paper in the council's Journal of Indian Medical Heritage, lists 4,676 manuscripts in scripts including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Arabic and Persian. Training more people to read them is the step that turns a catalogue into usable knowledge.

Short-term: The researchers and scholars who attended now have hands-on training in reading and editing Telugu medical manuscripts, which they can apply to collections in libraries and institutions.

Long-term: More trained transcribers and editors could mean more critical editions of Telugu Ayurvedic texts, making a regional body of medical history available in print and online for historians and researchers.

Who is affected: Ayurveda researchers and students; manuscript libraries and temple collections such as those in Tirupati; historians of science and medicine; and readers interested in India's medical heritage.

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