UNESCO palm-leaf preservation project

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http://xlweb.com/heritage/asian/palmleaf.htm

MEMORY OF ASIA Project to preserve palm-leaf manuscripts of Asia

 

For over two thousand years, scribes have recorded much of India's

literary and scientific heritage on the readily available medium of

dried, smoothed and smoke-treated leaves of talipot (olai in Tamil) palm

trees. Carefully etching letters into the dried leaf with a stylus in a

manner that avoids splitting the leaf and later applying lampblack or

turmeric to enhance contrast and legibility, uncounted generations of

scribes preserved much of India's vast intellectual legacy. When left

undisturbed in the tropical climate, these palm-leaf manuscripts could

last three or four centuries, after which a new patron would commission

scribes to copy the precious manuscripts onto freshly treated

palm-leaves.

 

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