French Institute Pondicherry
Showing all 19 books
The Bhaktimandakini is a commentary by the Keralan exegete Purnasarasvati, a Saiva ascetic who is well known for his learned and aesthetically sensitive commentaries on works of belles lettres in Sanskrit. The commentary expounds the Visnupadadikesastotra, a hymn of fifty-two intricately elegant verses that describe every detail of Visnu from his toes to his hair, as well as his spouses and his various weapons (conch, discus, sword, etc.). This literary stotra, ...
Four Forts of the Deccan which presents four significant fortifications of South India, namely Daulatabad, Mudugal, Gandikota and Gutti, each of which furnishes evidence of the excellence of the military architecture developed in the Kingdoms of the Deccan between the 13th and the 18th centuries. The main purpose of this study is to analyse the building techniques in order to establish the typology of the works and to bring into focus a reliable method to ...
Maram, signifying 'trees' in more than one South Indian language, is a computer aided database product endowed with considerable information on farm tree multiple uses - indeed the first of its kind in an electronic format in the peninsular Indian context. It covers a total of 269 woody species comprising 19 endemics from 544 small, medium and large farms spread over 61 districts in three states, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is a useful and user-friendly ...
A Lot has been said recently about the destructive nature of colonial exploitation of nature resources in the tropics. This uniquely detailed study of one of the most wooded districts in India, North Canara (Uttara Kanada) in the Western Ghats, Karnataka, reveals that economic stake as well as a conservation agenda were at the centre of the British forest policy in the area. The study also argues that one of the most destructive consequences of colonial ...
This paper deals with the historical origins of the serious ecological situation which now prevails in the Central Western Ghats region of peninsular India. The present alarming state of things has evoked considerable attention, and efforts at popular mobilization, on the part of ecologically conscious people (including scientists) and movements in the recent past. But historical research on the subject is only at the beginning stage. Very substantial work has ...
This volume, planned as a tribute from admirers to a distinguished scholar, also proves, perhaps inevitably, to be a celebration of the field of Tamil studies. It demonstrates in the best possible way the international nature of this area of academic endeavour and illustrates the wide range of topics it covers. The field was perhaps first defined in modern times by the coverage of the series of conference-seminars organized by the International Association of ...
Senji, immortalized by Desing’s ballad, still pouplar in South India, is a significant place in the Tamil country. Successivly occupied by the Hindus of Vijayanagar, the Nayakas, the Muslims of Bijapur, the Marathas, the Mughals and finally by the French in 1750, it was, at the end of the 16th century, one of the biggest cities of the peninsula. The fort is particularly interesting for students of military architecture, because it is the only one in India where ...
The present volume contains an annotated critical edition of a once celebrated, though now little known liturgical hymn in one hundred verses by the most famous of the bearers of the initiatory name Aghorasiva. This twelfth-century theologian of Chidambaram is known both for his exegetical works (commentaries of his survive on the Mrgendravrtti, the Dvisatikalottaratantra, the Sarvajnanottaratantra and on several small theological treatises) and for his ritual ...
The inscriptions gathered together in this volume for the first time come from the Union Territory of Pondicherry and span a broad period from the 10th to the 10the century. The total number assembled is 545; only inscriptions on tombstones have been consciously excluded. The epigraphs belong to various dynasties, such as those of the Rastrakutas, Colas, later Pallavas, Pantiyas, the Vijayanagara kings and the Sambhuvarayas. The vast majority of them are written ...
Issuing from an origninal synthesis including and particularizing certain aspects of the Buddhist doctrines, Tibetan medicine has spread in similar cultural contexts, as is the case in Ladakh, nirth-western Indian Himalayas. This medicine is independent of religion but borrows from it elements to serve its medical and social, collective and individual interests. The medicine is never an isolatable speculation, it is the medicine of a socio-historical, political ...
This book brings together essays on some prominent defensive works which have been constructed over many centuries across the Indian subcontinent, particularly South India.
The first chapter, on the Harappan period and early historic Indian sites, is based mainly on archaeological reports; all the other chapters, covering South India from the 3rd to the 18th century A.D., draw on the available historical material, both documentary and epigraphic, as well as on ...
This bilingual (French-English) CD first shows Pondicherry from its origins to 1824, using reproductions of magnificent water colour maps and plans preserved in French archives. Through old postcards and a mixture of recent and archival photographs it then presents the town from 1824 to the present day, a small colonial settlement now merged in the Indian Union.
Portraits of Homeopathic Medicines exploring in rich and vivid detail the "characters" of a number of homoeopathic remedies. This series help the student of homoeopathy to learn and memorize the remedies and to put them into practice accurately. The information will also help the practitioner to revisit aspects which may enrich their prescribing options and to help them explore psychological types and behavior patterns. Volume 1 offers a narrative ...
Our present in characterized by a heretofore unknown pressure on the environment, raising our awareness of the fragility of our planet and our responsibility to preserve it. How to reconcile this exigency with the challenge of demography explosion? How to ensure a use of natural resources for human well-being that is not entirely dictated by market forces? How to rethink the relation between man and land and the environment? The terms 'governance' and ...
N. Kandasamy (1898-1977) a versatile, multidimentional Tamil scholar was an editor, translator, essayist, lexicographer, humorist, landlord, building contractor and film producer, rolled into one. During the period 1962 to 1967 in which he worked with the IFP, one of the works he undertook was an English translation of the classical Tamil Text Narrinai, from the best edition of the text then available. We present in this book that translation of ...