Some of the oldest surviving Sanskrit documents were discovered in a cave in China in 1906. There were only fragments, because the manuscripts were later dated to the first few centuries CE. Almost 2 millennia old, these pieces of ancient books were written on palm leaf, a practice which continued in South Asia till the 19th century when mechanized printing was introduced. Turns out palm leaves actually make for very hardy stationery to write on, surviving from a few decades to 600 years when treated well. It’s not easy though.
How were palm leaf manuscripts made?
Fronds of the Palmyra palm or the Talipot palm were cut and trimmed to size. The neatest pieces were cooked, cured and dried before they were ready for writing on. Scholars and scribes wrote using a metal stylus, indenting the leaf surface. In a similar process to intaglio printing, the indented pages were then rubbed with a natural black ink. The excess was wiped off, making the inked letters appear. Bound with string, these leaves would be the store of knowledge for centuries to come, copied by hand to new palm leaf books when they began to deteriorate.
If you ever think stationery doesn’t matter, think again. The palm leaf changed all of Asian culture. The reason most South and South-East Asian writing symbols are curved and rounded is that they were easier to inscribe into palm-leaf. Angled alphabets would cause the stylus to tear into the leaf and the scribe would have to start all over again. Stationery not only matters but changes the World.
Read other interesting stories of stationery and its origin on the links below,
- Discover the history of writing instruments, specifically brushed made in China – https://inkymemo.com/calligraphy-ink-brushes-from-china/
- Do you remember the transparent, plastic souvenir pens in the mid-1900s with floating objects? Read the interesting story of how they were invented! – https://inkymemo.com/how-does-a-floaty-pen-work/
