Saraswathi Mahal Library

The Saraswathi Mahal Library began as the 'Saraswathi Bhandar', a royal storehouse of manuscripts organized under the Thanjavur Nayak king Raghunatha Nayak in the early 17th century. When the Maratha dynasty took control of Thanjavur in 1674, rather than displacing the library they invested heavily in it, and it was Serfoji II, a Maratha ruler with a well-documented personal passion for scholarship, science, and the arts, who did the most to expand and systematize its holdings in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The library today holds an estimated tens of thousands of manuscripts, the majority in Tamil and Sanskrit, alongside significant holdings in Marathi — including thousands of court records in the Modi script documenting the day-to-day political and cultural administration of the Thanjavur Maratha court — as well as Telugu-language material. Its collection spans medicine, astrology, music, literature, and administration, making it an invaluable primary source for historians of South Indian intellectual and courtly life across the Nayak and Maratha periods. It is housed within the Thanjavur Maratha Palace complex, alongside the Thanjavur Art Gallery.