WonderManuscript culture fact

Palm-leaf manuscripts were the books of South and Southeast Asia for centuries. Scribes wrote or scratched texts onto long, narrow strips of dried palm leaf, then strung the leaves together between wooden covers.

Palm-leaf manuscript

The story behind the card

The leaves came mainly from two palms, the talipot and the palmyra, and were dried, boiled or smoked and polished before use. In South India and Sri Lanka, scribes scratched the letters in with a metal stylus, then rubbed the leaf with soot mixed with oil so the black filled the grooves; further north, writing in ink was more common. A cord through one or two holes kept the leaves in order. Sri Lankan tradition holds that the Buddhist Pali Canon was first written down on palm leaves in the first century BC. In the humid tropics a manuscript lasted a few centuries at most, so texts survived only because they were copied again and again.

Türkçe oku

Palmiye yaprağı yazmaları, Güney ve Güneydoğu Asya'da yüzyıllar boyunca kitabın yerini tuttu. Kâtipler metni kurutulmuş palmiye yaprağından kesilen uzun, dar şeritlere yazar ya da kazır, sonra yaprakları ipe dizip iki tahta kapak arasına bağlardı.

Yapraklar çoğunlukla iki palmiye türünden, talipot ve palmira palmiyelerinden alınır; kullanılmadan önce kurutulur, kaynatılır ya da isle tütsülenir ve parlatılırdı. Güney Hindistan'da ve Sri Lanka'da kâtipler harfleri madenî bir kalemle yaprağa kazır, sonra yaprağa yağla karıştırılmış is sürerlerdi; is çiziklere dolar, yazı siyah görünürdü. Daha kuzeyde mürekkeple yazmak daha yaygındı. Yapraklardaki bir ya da iki delikten geçirilen ip, sayfaları sırayla bir arada tutardı. Sri Lanka geleneğine göre Budist Pali Kanonu ilk kez MÖ 1. yüzyılda palmiye yapraklarına yazıldı. Tropik nemde bir yazma en fazla birkaç yüzyıl dayanabildiği için metinler ancak tekrar tekrar kopyalanarak günümüze ulaştı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Palm-leaf manuscript

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Palm-leaf manuscripts were the books of South and Southeast Asia for centuries. Scribes wrote or scratched texts onto long, narrow strips of dried palm leaf, then strung the leaves together between wooden covers.

The story behind the card

Sources and further reading

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