Palm-Leaf Manuscript Museum

In News

• The Kerala government will inaugurate a palm-leaf manuscript museum with modern audio-visual technology at the Central Archives, Fort, in Thiruvananthapuram.

About the museum 

• It is set up by the Archives Department.
• Cost would be ?3-crore.
• The museum has eight theme-based galleries where select manuscripts from one of the biggest palm-leaf collections in the country will be displayed.
• The other galleries are:
  • Land and people.
  • Administration.
  • War and peace.
  • Education and health.
  • Economy.
  • Art and culture – the Mathilakom records (a collection of 3,000 cadjan manuscript rolls possessed by Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple). 

What is the Palm-leaf manuscript?

• These are manuscripts made from 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.

Source: TH