Introducing Annamayya to the digital world

Introducing Annamayya to the digital world
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Introducing Annamayya to the digital world.Peddi Sambasiva Rao (72) is in the evening of his life but is working with renewed vigour on his new found mission. He wants to digitise and provide an online catalogue of the works of saint poet Tallapaka Annamacharya.

Peddi Sambasiva Rao (72) is in the evening of his life but is working with renewed vigour on his new found mission. He wants to digitise and provide an online catalogue of the works of saint poet Tallapaka Annamacharya. There are more than 35,000 books and hymns of Annamayya which are being digitised by him.Sambasiva Rao’s dream doesn’t come as a surprise as he is a lexicographer who has also taken up the task of updating the Sankaranarayana English-Telugu dictionary which will update words in Telugu and pronounce words.

Readers at Annamayya Grandhalaya

Sambasiva Rao hails from Guntur and is burning the midnight oil to realise his mission. He has teamed up with Wikipedia for his mission to prepare 110 Telugu catalogues and digitalise 35,000 books on Annamayya which are voluminous and are in danger of degradation as they are in paper form. The Annamayya Grandhalaya in Guntur is the platform for digitisation which houses over 70,000 Telugu books and 30,000 English books of rare and distinct authors.

Peddi Sambasiva Rao

Sambasiva Rao is working with Unicode software which translates Telugu words typed in English to Telugu. Despite his old age, Sambasiva Rao is confident that the works would be completed in another three months.He is overwhelmed with the feeling that he could present the rich literary works for future generations for posterity. His mission is to enliven Annamayya for generations ahead and does not wish to see the saint poet end up as a story such as 'Once upon a time there lived a man called Annamayya'.

Meanwhile the librarians and the technical team at Annamayya Grandhalaya have been trained by Wikipedia to digitise Sambasiva Rao’s work as well as other books in the library. He is also being assisted by organisations like Andhra Bharati in Benguluru and Manasu Foundation, who are also pursuing similar missions to preserve age old literature for future generations. Of the 29 volumes of Annamayya consisting 15,000 hymns, seven volumes have been typed. Sambasiva Rao wishes that once his mission is completed the world would recount his name along with Annamayya.

By Ravi P Benjamin

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