Physical Object
Aasthana Kolakalam
The catalogue information from holding repository identify this manuscript as Astana Kolakalam. The first leaf which contains an invocation also refers to the manuscript as Astana Kolakalam. However, we are unsure if the following leaves belong to Astana Kolakalam, which is recognised as a mathematical manuscript in the tradition of Kanakkatikaram tradition. Even if it is, the manuscript is clearly incomplete.
Astana Kolakalam is considered to have been inspired by Kanakkatikaram texts and follows a similar organisation of problem verses based on context of computations, such as gold, land, grain and so on. The author intend it to be a summary (kolakalam) which will be an useful reference both the skilled and numerically weak.
Whether all the leaves we have here belongs to Astana Kolakalam needs to be examined. Besides manuscripts housed in GOML, Chennai and Saravati Mahal Library there are also two edited volumes of Astana Kolakalam available.