ORT observations of the damped Lyman α system towards PKS 0201+113

We report a deep radio search with the Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT) for the redshifted 21-cm absorption line from the damped Lyman a system seen at redshift 3.388 against the quasar PKS 0201 + 113. This is currently the most distant system for which a detection of the 21-cm absorption line has been claimed. The present observations have a sensitivity comparable to the earlier ones and detect no statistically significant absorption. We use the non-detection to place an upper limit of similar to 0.011 on the optical depth of the damped Lyman a absorber. This corresponds to a lower limit of similar to 5600K to the spin temperature of the system. This is considerably higher than the previous upper limit of similar to 1380 K.