Preserving Ancient Manuscripts in India

But either way, the leaves have to be specially prepared. They have to be dried and seasoned. For this, the leaves are boiled with hot water or steam, and then kept under wet sand to retain the surface softness. After drying, the leaves are polished and cut into desired size and shape, with two holes punched on one side to let slip a thread to string them together.

Source

Once the letters are transcribed on the leaves, the surface of the leaves are blackened with a mixture of vegetable oil (citronella, camphor or sandalwood) and charcoal. This made them resistant to insects and also made the writing legible. An ingenious method used in olden times was to hang the manuscripts over the fire-place in the kitchen.

Native Methods and Herbs Used in Manuscript Preservation

Great care used to be taken to protect manuscripts from light, dust, heat and humidity. To prevent curling at the edges and chipping, the manuscripts were placed between two wooden boards, wrapped in clothes dipped in turmeric water and kept in chests made of neem wood. The palm leaves were strung together with a string of cotton or silk using a needle made of bamboo. Occasionally, they were exposed to sunlight. Traditionally, these were also taken out on ‘Vijaya Dashami’ day at the end of the nine-day Navaratri festival in September–October when they were cleaned, worshipped and kept back.

Some of the herbs that are used to preserve the manuscripts include Aswagandha, Vasambu (Acorus Calamus, sweet flag), black pepper, dry ginger, cloves, tobacco, caraway seeds, sandal wood oil, powder of custard apple seeds, black cumin, camphor, neem or Margosa leaves (Azadirachta indica) and citronella oil (an extract of Citrus grass).

Manuscript Preservation for the Modern World

Even today, there are families ( very small in number) who preserve palm-leaf manuscripts, and they copy the text into new sets of leaves when the old ones become too old and decrepit. Some scholars have taken great pain to collect manuscripts from such families and preserve them in libraries. The Saraswati Mahal Library in Tanjavur in Tamil Nadu, South India and the Oriental Manuscripts Library in various states of India have good collections of manuscripts.

The Sarasvati Mahal Library is one of the few medieval Libraries that exist in the world. It contains very rare and valuable collection of manuscripts on all aspects of art, culture and literature. Visitors can have a glimpse of preserved books and can sit and read in the library premises.

Today, air-conditioning with dehumidifiers and fumigation methods are available for preserving the rare manuscripts. Technology lets you preserve manuscripts in the form of microfilm and microfiche.The following video by Himalayan Academy illustrates the process of photographing the manuscripts.

Though sporadic efforts have been made to microfilm and catalogue the contents in the manuscripts libraries mentioned earlier, but as yet, no persistent efforts have been made to scan the documents and computerise the same. If scanned and stored and made available as a website, they could be useful for world wide scholars and lovers of books.