An epic composed five centuries ago, scribed on palm leaves two centuries ago, microfilmed, transferred to compact disk, and on to print medium, has now been dedicated and presented to the Kannada literary world, thanks to an NRI.

Settled in the US, it was by no means an easy task to decipher the mammoth epic, composed in 11,682 poems on 232 palm leaves. Yes, Holalkere R Chandrasekhar, professor of Physics in the University of Missouri in Columbia, has achieved this feat.

Despite his preoccupation with his academics, he took time off to transcribe the material into two volumes of 900 pages each, spending about a 1,000 hours to bring out the monumental Vaishnava treatise, Karnataka Bhagawatha.
This stalk of palm leaves, with intricate writings on both sides, accommodating over 11, 000 poems on just 232 leaves, was in an ancestral house in Holalkere in Chitradurga district, well preserved and passed on from one generation to another. It had, in fact, become an object of reverence and was being worshiped on festivals.
Prof Chandrasekhar, who had spent his early childhood in this ancestral home, was unaware of the existence of this palm leaf literature, much less that this epic was composed five centuries ago by Nityatma Sukhayogi.

Little did he know that one of his forefathers Ramannaiah, had transcribed this composition on to palm leaves.
 As providence would have it, during a chance visit to Bangalore in 1991 for a conference, he learnt that his cousin Sheshagiri Rao had the manuscript and managed to get it from him the very next year.

“I marvelled at how it had managed to survive more than two centuries and many different homes. Reading from the original was a sure recipe to destroy it. I decided to microfilm it and store it away in a controlled environment. Transcriptions contained in this book were done from the microfilm over a period of a decade. I am grateful to my family for their patience and support during this long endeavour,” acknowledges Prof Chandrasekhar.

The next break came in 2004 when he discussed this manuscript with his friends in America where he made a presentation of this work to a group of Kannada enthusiasts. They all extended their valuable support and advice in advancing this project. His mother-in-law, Smt Kusuma Chandrapal, contributed a generous amount from her savings. Invigorated by this goodwill and encouraged by his brother Prof H R Ramakrishna Rao in Bangalore, Prof Chandrasekhar started editing the text with the help of scholars in Mysore.

An editorial committee was also formed for this purpose, which did a splendid job over a period of two years.
Prof Chandrasekhar hoped that the readers would appreciate the significance of this work beyond its contents. A synopsis of the book is also given in English for those who are challenged to read and understand Kannada poetry.

Bhagawatha Purana is the most famous and sacred text after Ramayana and Mahabharatha. It is for the first time that Karnataka Bhagawatha in its revised form is published in full.