 |
| Venkita Raja Poonithaya, 'Gayathri', Ayithanadukka, near Mulleriya, Kasaragod |
To the Kannada teacher of a school in Edaneer Village in Kasaragod District, a friend posed a challenge: to trace the reference to aeroplane-making in the ancient text of Bharadwaja Samhita. Venkita Raja Poonithaya took up the challenge in right earnest. Years of painstaking effort in tracing relevant manuscripts, deciphering the content etc finally took him to a conclusion vastly different from the one neither his friend nor he himself dreamt of: that Tulu language had a script.
This academic achievement and subsequent work in editing few classics in that language were the highlights of his career which was crowned with a national-level best teacher award received from President R.Ventataraman in 1991.
Various manuscripts required by him to come to this conclusion came from various sources. First, Karnaparvam, a verse written by Vijayanagara king Hariharan. This manuscript was obtained by Poonithaya from a peson at Mundya in Puthoor Taluk. His second source was the manuscript library of Calicut University. Kaveri Kavyam and Devi Mahatmyam were obtained from here. The existence of Tulu engravings near the Anantapuram temple and the collection of 2000 odd Tulu books at Dharmasthala give credence to his claim. He edited the Tulu Bhagavatam and Tulu Mahabharatam and had them published in translation.
His next effort was to collect the traditional songs and proverbs of Tulu. After locating a collection at Nettaniga village in Kasaragod, he had them transferred to 50 cassettes. According to him, Tulu script has closest resemblance to Malayalam.
Poonithaya was born in 1936. He obtained Sahitya Siromani in Sanskrit and Vidwan in Kannada from Madras University. Later he obtained M.A in Kannada from Mysore University. He has published 22 books including original writings and translations. He was a member of 12 expert committees and has received 10 awards including the medal from the President.
Courtesy:
Siby John Thooval, Sree, Malayala Manorama, February 11, 2007
Contributed by: Administrator
