The diversity of Gundert's interests is reflected in his estate: the collection includes grammars, spelling books and religious texts. But Gundert's literary interests and undertakings go far beyond this framework and it would be a gross underestimation of this scholar to reduce him to these two areas.
Rather, Hermann Gundert sought to understand an entire culture and to capture it in literature, and his legacy includes the famous works Indulekha and Kundalata, which are considered to be the first Malayalam novels. In addition to the modern literary works of his time, he also collected old texts from the Sanskrit and Malayali tradition; for example, there is the Sanskrit work Vajrasuci with a Malayalam commentary or Krsnagatha, a well-known poetic description of Krishna's life in Malayalam and many other surprises.
Gundert was particularly interested in the history of the origin of Kerala, as we find several versions of Kerala Pazhama or Keralolpatti.
Hermann Mögling, a close collaborator and confidant of Gundert, worked in the Kanarese (Kannada) language area bordering Kerala. Mögling was primarily concerned with this language. In addition to grammatical and lexical works, he also collected and edited proverbs and literary texts. The most important works of the Kannada tradition were to appear in his 'Bibliothekca Carnatica'. Although the series was never completed, the first 5 folio volumes contain some important texts on the religious and intellectual history of South India, such as the Cannabasava Purana, a hagiography by the poet and religious revolutionary Basava, or Karnataka Bharata, the extremely popular Canarese adaptation of the Mahabharata.
The various dictionaries in the estate should be interesting sources not only for linguists, but also for religious and cultural historians, as they are an excellent way of tracing the shift in the understanding of certain terms. These include the Kannada-Latin and Malayalam-Latin dictionaries compiled by various institutions for the missions in the Mysore area.
