''Kalaikkalanjiam'' (Tamil: Encyclopedia) is a universal

encyclopedia An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia ** Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, na ...

, published by the Tamil Development Academy,

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

. The project was funded by the

Union Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

, the

State Government A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonom ...

of then

Madras Presidency The Madras Presidency, or the Presidency of Fort St. George, also known as Madras Province, was an administrative subdivision (presidency) of British India. At its greatest extent, the presidency included most of southern India, including the ...

and many Tamil well wishers. The Tamil Development Academy announced its intent to produce this encyclopedia on the day of Indian Independence 15 August 1947. The work started in the academy's Madras University Campus on 20 October 1947. The chief editor of this effort was Periyasaamy Thooran.

The first volume was released in 1954 and the tenth and final volume was released in 1968. : Volume 1 – 1954 – 742 pages : Volume 2 – 1955 – 760 pages : Volume 3 – 1956 – 756 pages : Volume 4 – 1956 – 778 pages : Volume 5 – 1958 – 750 pages : Volume 6 – 1959 – 770 pages : Volume 7 – 1960 – 754 pages : Volume 8 – 1961 – 758 pages : Volume 9 – 1963 – 751 pages : Volume 10 – 1968 – 560 pages

Contributors

Following groups were involved in producing these volumes: * Executive groups 5, Total members 74 * Content groups 21, Total members 132 * Research groups 27, Total members 66 * Glossary group 1, Total members 40 In total, 2240 scholars have contributed to various articles in these 10 volumes. A second revised edition for this encyclopedia was planned with 12 volumes of 1000 pages each. But the plan didn't materialize due to various reasons. The entire Kalaikkalanjiam is available online at the

Tamil Virtual Academy Tamil Virtual Academy, formerly known as the Tamil Virtual University, is a distance education institution based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. The Government of Tamil Nadu established the Tamil Virtual University on 17 February 2001 as a s ...

website.

Letter from Tamil Development Board donating 20 volumes of encyclopedia in Tamil under Creative Commons license

In 2014, Tamil Development Academy donated all 10 volumes under Creative Commons Share-Alike 3.0 license based on

Tamil Wikipedia The Tamil Wikipedia () is the Tamil language edition of Wikipedia established in September 2003, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. The Tamil Wikipedia is the second largest Wikipedia among Indian languages and the largest Wikipedia by article cou ...

contributors' request. Along with this, 10 volumes of Kuzhandhaigal Kalaikkalanjiam was also released under Creative Commons license. Image:TamilEncyclopediaSet10Volume7500Pages.jpg, ''Tamil Encyclopedia'' 10 Volume set (7500 pages) Image:TamilEncyclopediaCloseUp.jpg, ''Tamil Encyclopedia'' (sample detail) Image:TamilChildrenEncyclopedia10VolSet.jpg, ''Tamil Encyclopedia for Children'' Image:TamilChildrenEncyclopediaCloseUp.jpg, ''Children's Tamil Encyclopedia'' (sample detail)

References

External links

{{commons category
Scanned copy of this encyclopedia available in Tamil Virtual University
Tamil language encyclopedias Indian encyclopedias 1954 non-fiction books Indian online encyclopedias 20th-century encyclopedias 20th-century Indian books

Contents

Contributors

References

External links