Palm-Leaf Manuscript Profiling InitiativeResearchers from Bangalore Visit the CSMC

3 December 2024

To clarify the provenance of historical palm-leaf manuscripts in India, CSMC researchers are working with the National Institute for Advanced Studies in Bangalore. A three-member delegation from NIAS recently visited Hamburg to familiarise themselves with the equipment and methods of the Artefact Lab.

Tens of thousands of 19th-century palm-leaf manuscripts are stored in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. These objects are an invaluable source for understanding the history of religion, culture, science, and literature in this region. However, historians have not been able to fully unlock the knowledge they contain because, in many cases, crucial information about the manuscripts’ origin is missing. In particular, it is often unknown exactly where the documents come from. Indologists like Giovanni Ciotti are therefore very interested in developing non-invasive analytical methods that can provide information about the provenance of their research objects without damaging the manuscripts.

Since 2019, Ciotti has been leading a working group at the CSMC, in which chemists, physicists, and Indologists work together to develop and apply such methods in the field. Because the valuable manuscripts cannot be transported to the cluster’s Artefact Lab in Hamburg, the researchers of the ‘Palm-Leaf Manuscript Profiling Initiative’ (PLMPI) have developed a mobile Container Lab. Since spring 2024, it has been stationed in Puducherry, India, where a team of CSMC and local researchers examines historical manuscripts stored on the premises of the Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP) until the autumn of next year.

The Container Lab is primarily used to conduct DNA, proteomics, and metabolomic analyses. The aim is to characterise the palm leaves used to produce the manuscripts using molecular markers. However, this approach is not the only one being pursued by the PLMPI team. In particular, numerous test measurements of palm-leaf manuscripts owned by the CSMC and the Hamburg State and University Library with a variety of different instruments from the Mobile Lab have shown that X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy can yield crucial information. With XRF analysis, researchers can determine the elemental composition of palm-leaf manuscripts. Due to the purely organic nature of these artefacts, the focus here is on the analysis of trace elements. These can vary greatly depending on how the manuscripts were produced, making it possible to draw conclusions about their origin. FTIR spectroscopy, on the other hand, can be used to identify the molecular composition and structure of palm leaves and thus provide further information on their species and provenance.

To be successful, the CSMC researchers depend on competent local partners. In addition to the IFP, the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Bangalore, which closely collaborates with the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), is a partner in this project. The multidisciplinary research centre supports PLMPI primarily in the field of archaeometry, the analysis of archaeological objects using scientific methods. From the outset, an essential part of PLMPI has been the exchange of knowledge with local colleagues. It is obvious that, even in the best-case scenario, only a fraction of the work needed to investigate the manuscript collections on site can be done as part of the project itself. PLMPI aims to inspire a new idea and method; for a long-term impact, they need taken up by the research community, especially in India. The local partners play a key role in this process.

In November 2024, three researchers from Bangalore – Dr S. Udayakumar and Madan Sunderraj from NIAS, and Thamam Mubarish from IISc – came to Hamburg to meet members of the PLMPI team and the Mobile Lab. One key aspect of their one-week stay was to receive training from Sebastian Bosch, Grzegorz Nehring, and Lucas Voges to conduct experiments with an XRF scanner and FTIR spectrometer, both of which will be shipped to India in January 2025 to carry out measurements on site. Bosch, Nehring, and Voges will also spend a few weeks in India, and after their departure, these instruments will remain there permanently. The Indian colleagues’ visit to Hamburg is a welcome opportunity for them to get to know the equipment they will be housing in Bangalore on a long-term basis from next year – to be used both in the context of PLMPI and for their own research projects at NIAS. The training also included a handling session in which the researcher together discussed best practices when working with palm-leaf manuscripts with Davidson MacLaren.

During their stay, Udayakumar, Sunderraj, and Mubarish also met Markus Fischer, Marina Creydt, Nathalie Holz, and Marie Oest, who are responsible for the wet-chemical part of the material analyses in PLMPI. This part of the research will be carried out in the Container Lab. Fischer and Creydt, as well as their colleague Anastasia Poliakova, have spent several weeks working in Puducherry last summer and will return after the end of the monsoon. With their Indian partners, they discuss the current state of development of their methods. At the end of their visit, the delegation also met Soumya Gupta, India’s Consul General in Hamburg, who herself gained insights into the work of PLMPI in October.

‘We have been in close contact with our partners in India for a long time, but visits like this one are very valuable opportunities to intensify the exchange and to create an even stronger basis for the future,’ says Ciotti, who, as head of the working group, has accompanied the Indian delegation throughout the week. ‘This goes beyond the work in PLMPI. We currently have another project in India, the ‘Digital Preservation of Kerala Archives’ project, in which cooperation could be useful. And further opportunities for joint research projects may arise in the future. It is of great importance to us to have colleagues in India who are familiar with our equipment and methods and pursue similar research interests.’