Heritage preservation
Palm Leaf Manuscripts Restitution
Before paper, knowledge across India and South East Asia was incised onto palm leaves with a metal stylus. A great deal of it survives — and a great deal of it is quietly deteriorating.
We have invented a novel method for the complete restoration of these manuscripts: a concoction of eight medicated and carrier oils, applied with modern tools and instrumentation, in a process designed from the outset to work on hundreds of bundles rather than one leaf at a time.
See the methodWhat a palm leaf manuscript is
Palm leaf was among the most useful writing materials available before the invention of paper, particularly across India and the South East Asian region. Of roughly four thousand species of palm, only three yield leaves suitable for writing:
- Corypha umbraculifera Linn. — the Talipot palm
- Borassus flabellifer Linn. — the Palmyra palm
- Corypha taliera Roxb.
Leaves are collected from these trees and processed — cleaned, shade-dried and polished — before being cut to shape. The writing is then incised with a sharp-pointed metal stylus rather than applied as ink, which is why the script survives when a surface pigment would not.
The subjects run across the whole of recorded learning: scripture, the arts, culture, history, medical science, architecture. Finished leaves are bundled into manuscripts, and those bundles are held in libraries across India and South East Asia.
Why they deteriorate
Stored manuscripts degrade for many reasons at once — physical conditions such as temperature, humidity, light and simple ageing; microbes, moulds and fungi; insects and rodents; environmental pollutants including dust and dirt; and the cumulative effect of human handling and natural calamity.
The result is a collection that is legible today and may not be in twenty years, which is what makes this work time-sensitive rather than merely worthwhile.
A single collection can run to a hundred thousand pages. Treating it one leaf at a time is not a realistic plan, which is the problem our method was designed around.
Our invention
The method, step by step
Developed by the Karnataka team working with Adi Dhwani, drawing on established international conservation practice — then taken further into a first-of-its-kind treatment using medicinal oils alongside modern gadgets and instrumentation.
Preparing the artisan
The method begins before the manuscript is touched. It specifies how an artisan prepares themselves, with particular emphasis on cleanliness, hygiene, and protection from dust and particulates. A manuscript that has survived centuries is not improved by careless hands.
Removing dust
Accumulated dust and dirt are removed from the bundle before any treatment begins, so that later stages do not grind particulates into the surface of the leaf.
Preparing the oil concoction
Eight oils — five medicated and three carrier — are combined, alongside spirit, powders and other cleansing elements. The oils are warmed to reduce viscosity so they blend properly, but kept below the point at which they would lose their properties or aroma.
Oil treatment
The oil reduces dryness in the leaf and lubricates the individual leaves within a bundle. This causes leaves that have adhered to one another over decades to separate, which is what makes the subsequent cleaning possible at all.
Spraying in array
Manuscripts are arranged in an array so that oil can be sprayed across a batch rather than a single bundle. Baniyan cloth is used as an absorbent — taking up excess oil while retaining enough to stop the leaves drying out again.
Bulk cleaning and colouring
A typical bundle holds hundreds of leaves, and cleaning each individually is a herculean task. The method provides for cleaning and colouring the leaves in bulk, then separating any that remain stuck together and giving them a final clean.
Digitisation
A high-end scanner reads several leaves at a time, with separate protocols for single-sided and double-sided manuscripts. Scanned images are written directly to storage for later post-processing — so the manuscript survives as a digital record as well as a physical object.
The concoction
Eight oils, each doing a different job
Five medicated oils and three carrier oils, warmed just enough to blend without losing their properties. Four of them, and what each contributes:
- Lemongrass oil
- Repels mosquitoes and other insects.
- Kanuga (karanja) oil
- Acts as a pesticide, protecting against boring insects.
- Eucalyptus oil
- Aids heat circulation through the leaf.
- Clove oil
- Accelerates the properties of the other oils. Where the others are extracted from leaves, clove oil comes from the clove itself, which augments its effect.
The full composition, including the remaining oils and the proportions in which they are combined, is not published. It is the substance of the method.
From the work
The process in the field
Photographs from restoration work carried out on a collection of old and rare manuscripts.
Watch
The restoration process
A record of the work as it is actually carried out, from bundled manuscripts through oil treatment and cleaning.
Context
Why this sits alongside our software
A collection of nearly one lakh pages of old and rare manuscripts was located and gathered over four decades of research and fieldwork with folk and tribal communities. Preserving it is now urgent.
The Karnataka team of Adi Dhwani Trust took an active role in preserving and digitising these particularly difficult manuscript materials. Drawing on prior experience in safeguarding, packing and transporting folk and tribal musical instruments and other antiquities, we developed a methodology in line with practice adopted by institutions worldwide — and then went beyond it.
It belongs on the same page as our legal AI work for a simple reason. Both are about knowledge that exists but cannot be reached: in one case because the medium is decaying, in the other because the process is impenetrable. The instinct is the same.
Every bundle is catalogued and tagged before treatment, so a leaf can be traced back to its manuscript after processing.
Get in touch
Do you hold a manuscript collection?
If you are a library, a university, a temple trust, a government department or a private custodian with palm leaf manuscripts at risk, we would like to hear from you.