The New Indian Express ·
Manapparai’s very own Indiana Jones: Prof Selvaraju takes students hunting for history
TIRUCHY: Surrounded by hills and rocky outcrops, the outskirts of Mannaparai are dotted with small places of worship, old sculptures and inscriptions worn down by time and neglect. Not too far away, at the Government Arts and Science College in Manapparai, Tiruchy, A Selvaraju, a faculty member in the Department of Tamil Studies, is making sure that his students don’t walk past them the way everyone else does.
It all began one ordinary day during a lecture on Tamil history. “When I spoke about the history of the region in class back in 2024, students began telling me about sculptures they had seen in their own villages. That made us think of studying them through field visits,” says Selvaraju.
And just like that, one field visit led to another. More often than not, the team stumbled upon remarkable finds in the area. One of their earliest discoveries came when Gunasekaran, an undergraduate student in the department, mentioned a sculpture in Idaiyapatti. “This prompted us to visit the site. During the field visit, we identified it as a Jain Tirthankara sculpture, dating back to between the 8th and 10th centuries. Two other damaged sculptures were found hidden inside thorny bushes. We also came across what I believe to be remains of a buried Jain monastery,” Selvaraju said.