Talk:Palm leaf manuscript

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[edit] Wikify

I found this article at random, and noticed that it was both interesting, and in need of a lot of work. I'll be putting some time in over the next few days, and any help would be great. --Apyule 11:50, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] UNESCO Memory of Asia site

Two paragraphs were copied verbatim from http://www.xlweb.com/heritage/asian/palmleaf.htm without attribution:

When this age-old cycle was broken in the 19th century, the remaining corpus of palm-leaf manuscripts and the knowledge contained in them began a long slide into obscurity and destruction. With the tradition of the scribe fast dying and with no new system of recording their contents, not only have vast quantities of these manuscripts disappeared forever, but even the very ability to read the archaic palm-leaf script, called Grantha, today survives only among specially-trained scholars.

A recent tentative survey by the Institute of Asian Studies, Madras, indicates that there are still about a hundred thousand palm-leaf manuscripts surviving in South Indian repositories alone, with thousands more scattered across the subcontinent and overseas. But most of these palm-leaves are approaching the end of their natural lifetime and are facing imminent destruction from dampness, fungus, white ants, cockroaches and - not least of all - disposal by villagers whose actions are dictated less by reverence than by superstition. MsMaven 16:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)