I would like to source some books,and info about the origins and practice of Kalaripayattu. I have already read most of the commonly available texts, so any direction from the society to explore lesser known documents would be appreciated.

Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede, born in 1637 in the castle Draakesteyn, near De Vuursche, a village in the province of Utrecht, became the colonial governor of Malabar, on the south-west coast of India, and from 1684 the head of the Dutch East Indies Company in India. He was an enthusiastic botanist and investigator of the Indian sub-tropical flora, and was interested in the medical and traditional uses of the plants he encountered. He had as collaborator Johannes Caesarius, a missionary in Indochina, who edited the first two volumes, but died before their appearance in print. After his death the editorship was taken over by Arnold Seyn (1640-1678), the director of the Leiden Botanical Garden, and by Jan Commelin (1629-1692). Commelin’s connection with Rheede and other patrons in the East Indies Company made the Amsterdam Botanical Garden, of which Commelin was director, the richest in Europe at the time. In Philosophical transactions for 1698 there is a note by James Petiver saying that the Dutch physician at Batavia, Willem ten Rhyne, who had served as resident physician at Deshima in Nagasaki Bay, Japan, also worked for Rheede in collecting and describing plants. As soon as enough material for a volume had been assembled Rheede sent it home to Holland, where botanists such as Commelin and others added notes and saw it through the press.Rheede writes that several artists contributed drawings, but much of the credit he gives to Pietro Foglia, or Father Matthias, a Neapolitan Discalced Carmelite, ca 1617-1691, who both drew and engraved many plates. The engraver Bastian Stoopendael (1636-1707) signed the first plate, which was drawn by Antony Jakob Goedkint. Rheede compiled the work also with the help of other missionaries, native doctors, native princes, and most probably native draughtsmen. ‘It is quite clear from the nature of these engravings that most of them were taken from drawings by Indian artists in Malabar. They show all the decorative qualities found in the drawings done for the British by Indian artists a century later, and even the details of techniques are similar. In particular, the tendency for them to spring straight out of the edge of the paper and to slant diagonally across it are very characteristic.’ (Hulton and Smith, Flowers in art from East and West).Each plate has the name of the plant in ‘Latin’ (in fact a transcription of the native name), Malayalam, Arabic, and Sanskrit. The plates depict both wild and cultivated plants, and many now familiar tropical fruits and spices. Several plates are devoted to ‘Tenga’, the coconut palm, the most important economic plant of Malabar. There are also the first illustrations of a large number of orchids

Hortus Malabaricus has been republished by Kerala University, a stupendous effort by Dr K.S.Manilal. Search the university website.

Malayalam version of Hortus Malabaricus The Hindu Thiruvananthapuram: The University of Kerala is bringing out a Malayalam version of Hortus Malabaricus, 325-year-old Latin treatise on the plant wealth of Asia and the tropics, with special reference to the Malabar coast. The Malayalam issue will be published in 12 volumes spanning 350 pages. The printing work will be undertaken by St. Joseph's Press here. University Vice-Chancellor M.K. Ramachandran Nair on Thursday handed over the CD of the treatise to press manager Jacob Korakkal. The Department of Publications under the university plans to release the volumes next year. University sources said the translation of the treatise into Malayalam was complete and the editing work was on. The English translation of Hortus Malabaricus, which was brought out by the university earlier, contains modern nomenclature and botanical interpretations of the rich and varied plant wealth of the region. The palm leaf inscriptions of Itty Achuthan, a traditional physician who belonged to Alappuzha, formed the original matter for the Latin text. It is thanks to the Dutch that the palm leaves were recovered, more than three centuries ago. Some of the plants that find a mention in the book have since become extinct. http://bit.ly/1jf5aUN