Palm-Leaf and Paper Manuscripts

Inspired by some recent communications, as scholars, collectors, and devotees of manuscripts around the world recognize a welcome on our website, we present some fragments from palm-leaf and paper manuscripts which have joined a collection willing to welcome them.  This private collection of many varieties of scripts, texts, languages, formats across the ages and across many cultures — see our Galleries — has generously allowed us to display, study, and publish them, along with discoveries that this collaboration permits.

For some time, I have meant to present these images on a Gallery of one kind or another on our nonprofit website.  In the transition from our first (Drupal) website to the second (WordPress), I encountered so many difficulties regarding any advance with the Galleries and Media, ensuring an inevitably cumbersome transition from one to the other.

That was then.  This is now.

Display

Here are a few of the images that we had intended to present, with generous permission of the owner, aware that our wide range of interests about scripts, texts, written sources might gather a broad range of spectators.  Experts, too.

The samples represent some Sanskrit and Jain manuscripts of various ages and texts.  Some have illustrations and decorative features.  On palm-leaf or on paper, some cases have centered holds for stringing.  Others have no such holes, but some cases included centered circular or similar elements which emulate stringing holes, without such functional characteristics.

Context

Sources of information, among many, might offer some points of reference and information about the materials.

Jain Manuscripts

• JAINpedia Manuscripts

Sanskrit Manuscripts

• Sanskrit Manuscripts  at the Cambridge University Library
• Sanskrit Manuscripts in the South Asian Rare Books Collection at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
• Sanskrit Manuscripts at the PENN Library of the University of Pennsylvania
• Sanskrit Mauscripts in the Robert Garrett Collections at Princeton University

A Preview

All the images are reproduced by permission of the collector.

Captions and descriptions arise, as our tasks and access to expertise permit.

We welcome your suggestions and information.

As we strive to learn more about these cases and their contexts, we observe that exhibiting such examples might provide pathways to better recognition and understanding of the scripts, texts, materials, layout, and transmission.  Our collector observes:  “I am of course hardly an expert on these things, as much as I would like to be; one incentive to accumulate them is to attempt to get a feel for their characteristics, as well as to get feedback from those who may know something helpful.  Besides that, they are fascinating.”

Samples on Display

1 Hindu Manuscript on Paper, dated VS 1646 / AD 1589/90

The date appears in the second-to-last line of text on this page.  The single column of 7 long lines is bounded by a pair of narrow bounding lines, which extend the full height of the extant page.

Hindu Manuscript on Paper, dated VS 1646 / AD 1589/90. Private Collection, reproduced by permission.

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II.  Paper Manuscript in Prakrit of the Kalpa Sūtra (Sanskrit: कल्पसूत्र), “The Book of Rituals”, with Decorative Stringing-Holes

Presenting the biographies of the Jain Tirthankaras, this text is traditionally held to have been composed by Bhadrabahu I.  The oldest surviving copies, written on paper, were made in Western India in the 14th century.  From the mid 15th-century onward, copies often — as here — have illustrations of scenes.

Western India, Gujarat or vicinity.

Circa 1500 CE.

Purchased in the Portobello Road Market, London.

Folio 28

Folio 36 with illustration

Detail

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III.  Manuscript on Paper with Decorative ‘Stringing Hole’

Leaf on Paper, Western India, Circa 1500. Private Collection, reproduced by permission.

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III.  Palm-Leaf Manuscript in Sanskrit from Nepal

Probably 15th Century CE.
Purchased online from a seller in the U.S.A.

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IV.  Astrological Manuscript in Sanskrit on Paper with Functional Stringing-Hole

The manuscript is incomplete.  The text appears to be astrological.
Probably 15th century CE.
Purchased online in 2 groups of leaves, which amount to a substantial part of the manuscript, albeit incomplete.

The manuscript is old enough to have functional stringing holes, rather than solely decorative ones.

The style of writing appears to be Jain.  A quick guide to the script is offered by: https://www.omniglot.com/writing/devanagari.htm . Examples digitized by the Cambridge University Library appear here:  http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/sanskrit/1

Detail of Title.

First Page of Text

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IV.  Paper Manuscript in Prakrit with Decorative Stringing-Hole

Western India, Gujarat or vicinity.
Circa 1500 CE.
Purchased in the Portobello Road Market, London.

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IV.  Paper Manuscript in Sanskrit with Ornate Border

Purchased from an online seller.

Leaf from a Manuscript on Paper in Sanskrit, with an Ornate Frame for the 4-Line Text. Purchased from an Online Seller in 2016.

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Do you have suggestions, corrections, and refinements concerning these pages?  We hope to learn more.

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