Carbon dating of palm-leaf MSS?

[Mark Allon]

Dominik,

Sorry for the delay, but mail takes a long time to get to Australia!

Your friend may be interested in the following article by myself, Richard Salomon, and two scientists:

Allon, Mark, R. Salomon, G. Jacobsen, and U. Zoppi. 2006. “Radiocarbon Dating of Kharoṣṭhī Fragments from the Schøyen and Senior Manuscript Collections.” In Jens Braarvig, ed., Buddhist Manuscripts III. Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection 4, pp. 279–91. Oslo: Hermes Publishing.

If he wants a pdf, I'll send it to you.

Regards
Mark Allon
University of Sydney


-----Original Message-----
From: Indology [mailto:INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Dominik Wujastyk
Sent: Tuesday, 7 April 2009 7:38 PM
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Subject: Carbon dating of palm-leaf MSS?

This message is forwarded on behalf of R. Ganapathy, who is not a member 
of this forum.  Please be sure to CC any replies to him, at 
<rg1939 at rcn.com>

Dominik Wujastyk
INDOLOGY committee

------------ Forwarded Message -----------
On Fri, 3 Apr 2009, RG wrote:

> Dear Dr Wujastyk:
>
> I got your address through a friend of mine in London.
>
> I was a Senior Res Associate at the Enrico Fermi Inst of the Univ of Chicago
> many years ago.
>
> I have a palm leaf manuscript, 868 pages, with grantha script describing
> Valmiki's Ramayan. I got this from an antique shop in Cochin five years ago.
>
> Because grantha was used in South India to transmit Sanskrit language, I
> decided to date this using carbon-14 method using accelerator mass
> spectrometry. I just got the preliminary age few days ago, about 350 years
> old from today.
>
> I searched the google to find other carbon 14 dates on the use of grantha
> script. I did not get any useful information. Since I am new to this field,
> I am looking for help in locating journals which publish C-14 dates on
> Indian palm leaf manuscripts.  What kind of range do we have on these
> dates?I would deeply appreciate if you can help me on this.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> R.Ganapathy
>
> Bethlehem, PA, USA
>
>