Provenancing Palm-Leaf Manuscripts

Non-invasive XRF analysis of folio 17v from Cod. Palmbl. III 118. Defined areas (black rectangle) are scanned and displayed as ‘element maps’. The areas of the scratched letters here show an increased iron content (orange), which could be due to the use of the metal stylus. Image: Sebastian Bosch

The historical palm-leaf manuscripts of Tamil Nadu belong to the UNESCO World Heritage. However, in most cases, their exact provenance is unknown.

Cod. Palmbl. III 118 in the Hamburg State and University Library is one of the very few palm-leaf manuscripts to bear the scribe’s colophon, that is, the scribe’s final statement providing information such as their own name, the date when they completed the manuscript, and the title of the text. It also tells us exactly where the manuscript was copied, namely in Thirunarayanapuram.

Profiling the material features of this manuscript and of a sizeable number of other manuscripts that are also explicit about the place of their provenance allows us to compare them with the material profile of other manuscripts that do not record where they were produced. This is the core idea behind the CSMC’s ‘Palm-Leaf Manuscript Profiling Initiative’. In particular, X-ray fluorescence analysis provides useful material information that can be matched with other codicological features.

We also carry out material analyses of South Indian palm-leaf manuscripts held at the Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP) and the École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in the Cluster’s Container Lab.