P.Perumal was born in 1954 in a village of Dindigul District, Tamilnadu. He did his B.Sc (Spl), M.L.I.Sc, and M.A, at Madurai Kamaraj University.
Joined as Conservator in the Thanjavur Maharaja Serfoji's Sarasvati Mahal Library, Thanjavur in 1980 and retired in 2012.
Specialized in conservation of palm leaf and paper manuscripts, books and miniature paintings. Did his Ph.D in history and development of manuscript conservation.
Has undergone six-month UNESCO sponsored Conservation Course in NRLC, Lucknow in 1988-89, three week ICCROM sponsored International Japanese Paper Conservation course in Japan and three month intern training in the libraries and museums of U.K under Nehru Fellowship.
Conducted several short-term training courses, workshops and seminars on conservation and participated in the International conferences held at Leyden, Netherlands and at Halle, Germany.
In the beginning, mankind the world over had used various methods for communicating their knowledge and experience to benefit their fellow beings. At first they made use of signs, later augmented them with vocal sounds which later evolved into language. As civilization grew, man started recording his thoughts and ideas, so as to benefit not only his contemporaries but for the succeeding generations as well. He made this recording through lines, symbols and line drawings. These were later developed into alphabetic letters.
Origin of Alphabets
Early man recorded information by drawing lines, symbols and pictures. We may say that these indeed evolved into the alphabets. The invention and growth of the alphabet is a landmark in the history of civilization. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the invention of the alphabet paved the way for various other inventions and discoveries (Richardson 64). Early writings were pictograms-resembling the shapes of humans, animals, birds and other articles of everyday use (Brookfield 6). This pictorial- alphabetic method is said to have existed as early as 3300 BСЕ.
The earliest manuscript known is from the Sumerian clay tablets obtained from the archaeological excavation of the Uruk (Iraq) town of Mesopotamia and belonging to 3300 BCE (Robinson 11), Such engravings on clay tablets are called cuneiform letters. Likewise, writing by engraving grooves on brick and stone materials are considered very early forms of records. Later, by employing this method, icons and alphabets were formed in bas relief. It is agreed that the Sumerian letters discovered in Mesopotamia are the oldest known letter form in the world (Robinson 12). Following this, writings belonging to 3100 BCE in Egypt, 2700 in Babylonia, 2500 in Indus valley, 1200 in China, and to 500 BCE in Central America have been discovered (Robinson 11).
The very famous Rosetta stone has writings of hieroglyphic characters. A rendering of this pictorial text in Greek alphabets is found engraved immediately under it. These alphabets help to decipher several other such pictorial stone inscriptions (Kanthaiya Pillai 12). In Egypt a good number of papyrus manuscripts carrying Greek alphabets are found. During excavations in Saqqara in Egypt, the statue of a scribe was found, which is estimated to be 4500 years old. It depicts a scribe writing on papyrus (Robinson 106). Likewise, the Mesopotamia excavations brought up the statue of Hesire, the Chief Scribe of the royal court, holding a pen in his hand (Robinson 106). These findings reveal the existence of writing in ancient times.
From the excavations of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the Indus Valley, highly evolved forms of town layouts, walls, towers, idols, clay tablets, seals, clay ware, metal sheets, elephant tusks and bones were discovered. The writings found in them have been proved to be very ancient. Their characters bear a similarity to Tamil alphabets (Robinson 148).
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