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well when it comes to ancient manuscripts, papyrus and parchment are very famous and in hollywood movies, it is often shown how ancient writing materials looked like and how scribes used to document using this technology, and ofcourse chinese are often seem using their paint brush to make nice chinese caligraphy on paper, but what has never been shown, how south asia one of the ancient civilizations documented and recorded things using manuscripts and i always wondered if there were ancient libraries in sub continent.
to my surprise, i came across palm leaf manuscripts.
although palm leaves are limited in their size, they were not only used to write and record things, but also used to paint very nice religious paintings and not only that they were used for recording science, engineering design etc.
there are many reasons why palm leaves are not as popular as parchment, papyrus or paper, one of the prime reason being, indian's tropical humid climate ensured that no palm leaf manuscript survives earlier than 14th century, most of the earlier documents have been discovered from less humid places like central asia, pakistan, nepal, even western china. and second being palm leaves couldnt be converted into giant scrolls like one can do with parchment, paper or papyrus. another reason being, india was not known for recording history and it was rather considered important to record religious texts rather than write accounts of kings which they clearly didn't consider very important.
It is also surprising that india holds one of the largest manuscript collections in the world despite limitations of palm leaf manuscripts and amazingly they exhibit variety of topic not limited to religious texts. many libraries were known in sub continent to contain manuscripts like nalanda university library is thought to be nine stories tall and had three funcioning libraries before its destruction. Nalanda university is estimated to contain one million manuscripts compared to 50 thousand at alexandria university. chinese pilgrim Xuanzang
when he left india after 22 years of his journey, he carried so many manuscripts to china that the elephant he accompanied as a gift from india was overloaded with them
here ill some pictures of sub continent legacy of palm leaf manuscripts
Manuscript from a Tibetan monastery. written in Sanskrit on smoke treated palm-leaves, with outer covers. late 11th C.
Jain, 1260, Mewar, Rajputana, India
Gilgit manuscripts date from 2nd century AD
paintings
An illustrated Jain palm leaf manuscript on the construction of altars
12th Century's original palm leaf manuscript of Gita Govinda written by Jayadeva, Odisha state museum.
palm leaf manuscripts were not only used in the sub continent but burma, thailand, cambodia, indonesia and malaysia.
to my surprise, i came across palm leaf manuscripts.
although palm leaves are limited in their size, they were not only used to write and record things, but also used to paint very nice religious paintings and not only that they were used for recording science, engineering design etc.
there are many reasons why palm leaves are not as popular as parchment, papyrus or paper, one of the prime reason being, indian's tropical humid climate ensured that no palm leaf manuscript survives earlier than 14th century, most of the earlier documents have been discovered from less humid places like central asia, pakistan, nepal, even western china. and second being palm leaves couldnt be converted into giant scrolls like one can do with parchment, paper or papyrus. another reason being, india was not known for recording history and it was rather considered important to record religious texts rather than write accounts of kings which they clearly didn't consider very important.
It is also surprising that india holds one of the largest manuscript collections in the world despite limitations of palm leaf manuscripts and amazingly they exhibit variety of topic not limited to religious texts. many libraries were known in sub continent to contain manuscripts like nalanda university library is thought to be nine stories tall and had three funcioning libraries before its destruction. Nalanda university is estimated to contain one million manuscripts compared to 50 thousand at alexandria university. chinese pilgrim Xuanzang
when he left india after 22 years of his journey, he carried so many manuscripts to china that the elephant he accompanied as a gift from india was overloaded with them
here ill some pictures of sub continent legacy of palm leaf manuscripts
Manuscript from a Tibetan monastery. written in Sanskrit on smoke treated palm-leaves, with outer covers. late 11th C.
Jain, 1260, Mewar, Rajputana, India
Gilgit manuscripts date from 2nd century AD
paintings
An illustrated Jain palm leaf manuscript on the construction of altars
12th Century's original palm leaf manuscript of Gita Govinda written by Jayadeva, Odisha state museum.
palm leaf manuscripts were not only used in the sub continent but burma, thailand, cambodia, indonesia and malaysia.
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