Institut Français de Pondichéry

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The IFP building

The Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP) is a French research institute in the Indian city ​​of Pondicherry (French Pondichéry ). It was founded in 1955 and is subordinate to the French Foreign Ministry and the research organization Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). The main research areas are ecology , indology and social sciences .

history

The IFP was created in the course of the cession of the French colony Pondicherry to India with the aim of strengthening the cultural and scientific cooperation between France and India. The establishment of the institute was recorded in Article 24 of the Treaty on the Cession of the French Colonies in India, which was signed on May 28, 1956. The institute was opened on March 20, 1955. The IFP moved into its premises in Saint Louis Street in Pondicherry, which is still in use today. The founding director of the IFP was the Indologist Jean Filliozat , who was also head of the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), another French research institute with a focus on Asia.

The IFP originally had three sections: one for French linguistics and literary studies, one for natural sciences and one for Indology. The sections for French linguistics and literary studies were given up in 1958 when the Alliance française took over the task of teaching French language and culture in Pondicherry. In 1988 the remaining sections were reorganized and divided into three departments: one for ecology, one for indology and one for social sciences. A geomatics laboratory was added in 1994 . In 2003, the departmental libraries were merged into one interdisciplinary library.

Manuscript collection

The IFP has an extensive collection of 8187 palm leaf manuscripts , 360 paper manuscripts and 1144 modern transcripts (copies of palm leaf manuscripts on paper), most of which contain Shivaite texts. Together with the EFEO manuscript collection in Pondicherry, the IFP collection was included in the UNESCO World Document Heritage in 2005 under the title “ Shivaitic Manuscripts of Pondicherry ” .

Web links

Coordinates: 11 ° 56 ′ 13 ″  N , 79 ° 50 ′ 8.5 ″  E