The Abhilekh Patal, derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Abhilekh’ signifying records of ancient times, and ‘Patal’ representing a platform or a surface, is a digital repository thoughtfully curated by the National Archives of India (NAI).
This platform serves as a gateway to India’s historical legacy, offering a treasure trove of meticulously preserved documents and records.
Significantly, the acronym ‘PATAL’ is also an embodiment of its purpose ‘Portal for Access to Archives & Learning’. At its core, Abhilekh Patal is a digital initiative with a mission to provide easy access to India’s historical archives, comprising of an astounding 7 million records.
As part of our continuous efforts, we are converting these records into digital format to ensure their access in the modern era.
The index of the 7 million records can be found under our ‘Reference Tools’ collection.
The NAI team has been converting the content of these digitized reference tools into a structured database and have so far created the metadata entries for approximately 3 million records.
NAI has digitized and uploaded 15 million pages from the 300,000 records. NAI is on a mission to digitize and bring its entire collection comprising of approximately 7 million records and 300 million pages on Abhilekh Patal.