Manuscript Collections

The Sundarayya Vignana Kendram is in possession of Urdu manuscripts totaling around 12000. This collection was part of Abdus Samad Khan's Urdu library, acquired by the Urdu Research Library Consortium and housed at Sundarayya Vignana Kendram. The original collection was effected by the flood in August 2000, but was completely restored since then. A total of 600 Urdu manuscripts are catalogued and kept ready for the use by the scholars. The rest of them are being processed. The unique character of this collection is that several of them emanated in Hyderabad Deccan throwing light on Asaf Jahi Dynasty and Mughal era in India. The Sufi tracts are indeed considered to be rare by the scholars.

The original collector of the Urdu collection, Abdus Samad Khan is now helping Sundarayya Vignana Kendram in acquiring rare manuscripts. We have already gone to the press requesting the individual collectors, who are in need of housing their manuscript collections in a professional library to donate them to Kendram so that they could be scientifically treated and conserved for posterity.

Apart from Urdu manuscripts, the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram has private papers of Putchalapalli Sundarayya mostly in English and a small part in Telugu. This collection is more then one Lakh pages. The descriptive cataloguing is being developed so that this collection could be used by the scholars working on the Left, Peasant, Working class and Democratic movements in India. Being the founder member of the Communist Part of India, peasant and working class leader, one of the builders of Communist Party of India [Marxist] and an active Parliamentarian, he left behind very rare and crucial documentation behind.