Switchover from palm leaves to paper

[Bijoy Misra]

On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, Michael Witzel wrote:

> In Orissa, palm leaf MSS were prepared well into this century; and fakes
> are of course very recent: A nice fake one is the palm leaf written with
> ink in NAGARI script in Orissa(!), photo in the Vastu Upanisad, ed. Alice
> Boner/ Sadashiva Rath Sharma.  Some peope still know how to write with
> stylus on palm leaves. In the big India exhibition in Boston c.1990, an
> Oriya man did so, to show how things are done.
>
Palm leaf art and writing is an active pastime in Orissa.  I visited
a school in Bhubaneswar. They use stylus.  I am not sure if they are
duplicating older manuscripts.  I don't know if there is an intent to
"fake".  Quite a bit of Geetagovindam material is reproduced in modern
palm leaves though.


- Bijoy Misra.