Palm Leaf Souvenirs!

In the above picture, you can see very ancient and recent palm leaf writings. The ancient ones are in Sanskrit and the recent ones in Tamil and English, which have been placed before Gods for blessings during worship and sent to me.

It is very nice to receive these blessed souvenirs and as a result of it to gain knowledge of Palm leaf manuscripts and writings that have preserved our history, heritage, culture, epics and Holy Scriptures.

As you know, all our ancient manuscripts and writings were on Palm leaves. And some of these Palm leaf writings found date back to the 5th century and possibly much earlier. On receiving these blessed souvenirs, out of curiosity I read about the preparation of Palm leaves for writing and the process of writing. And I wanted to share this interesting information.  

It is said that Palm leaves were used as writing materials in the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia dating back to the 5th century as I mentioned earlier. It then spread elsewhere, and countless manuscripts and writings in different languages including Telugu have been found so far.

Palm leaves of the Palmyra palm or the Ola leaf or the Talipot palm were used for writing. The procedure of preparing the palm leaf to make it suitable for writing/engraving is said to be a long and time taking process. The unripe palm leaves are cut into the required shape and sun-dried. These semi-dried leaves are buried in muddy swamps for a few days and then retrieved & washed for further air drying. After that, they are given final seasoning by keeping inside rice heaps which makes these leaves insect-proof and stiff. These leaves are then stitched together to specific sizes/dimensions for giving beautiful artistic designs.

The text in Palm leaf manuscripts was inscribed with a knife pen on the rectangular cut and cured palm leaf sheets; colourings were then applied to the surface and wiped off, leaving the ink in the incised grooves. Each sheet typically had a hole through which a string could pass, and with these, the sheets were tied together with a string to bind like a book. A palm leaf text thus created would typically last between a few decades and about 600 years before it decayed due to dampness, insect activity and fragility. Thus the document had to be copied onto new sets of dried palm leaves.

It is very nice to receive these blessed souvenirs and gain knowledge of Palm leaf manuscripts and writings that have preserved our history, heritage, culture, epics and Holy Scriptures.