Palm Leaf Manuscript Museum

Subject :History

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate a palm-leaf manuscript museum with modern audio-visual technology at the renovated Central Archives, Fort, here on Thursday.

About the news

The Archives Department in association with Kerala Museum of History and Heritage has set up a palm-leaf manuscripts museum in the Fort area in Thiruvananthapuram.
The museum is loacted in a 400-year-old building which now holds the regional office of the State Archives Department.
It will feature a rare collection of over one crore palm-leaf manuscripts available with the Archives Department with the aim of communicating their importance to the public.
Manuscripts featuring ancient alphabets, including Vattezhuthu, Kolezhuthu and Malayanma will also be on display.
Representative ones will be selected from the vast collection of palm-leaf manuscripts, and be put up for display.
Visitors will first be greeted with an introductory session that highlights the history and importance of palm-leaf manuscripts in the state.
The museum will be divided into three sections, namely Travancore, Kochi and Malabar and these will again have subsections.
A heaven for history enthusiasts, the museum is expected to give a strong boost to research into the manuscripts..

About Palm Leaf Manuscripts:

Palm-leaf manuscripts are manuscripts made out of dried palm leaves.
Palm leaves were used as writing materials in the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia reportedly dating back to the 5th century BCE.
Their use began in South Asia and spread to other regions, as texts on dried and smoke-treated palm leaves of Palmyra palm or the talipot palm.
Their use continued till the 19th century, when printing presses replaced hand-written manuscripts.
One of the oldest surviving palm leaf manuscripts of a complete treatise is a Sanskrit Shaivism text from the 9th-century, discovered in Nepal, now preserved at the Cambridge University Library.
The Spitzer Manuscript is a collection of palm leaf fragments found in Kizil Caves, China.
They are dated to about the 2nd-century CE and are the oldest known philosophical manuscript in Sanskrit related to buddhism.

Regional Variations

Southeast Asia : With the spread of Indian culture to Southeast Asian countries like as Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines, these nations also became home to large collections.
Palm-leaf manuscripts called Lontar in dedicated stone libraries have been discovered by archaeologists at Hindu temples in Bali Indonesia and in 10th century Cambodian temples such as Angkor Wat and Banteay Srei.
Odisha: Palm leaf manuscripts of Odisha include scriptures, pictures of Devadasi and various mudras of the Kama Sutra.
Tamilnadu: Palm leaf manuscripts were used in the Tamil grammar book named Tolkappiyam which was written around 3rd century BCE.