Palm scriptures, treasures of Indian culture and heritage go through a meticulously painstaking process of preservation. The Sankrit University in Tirupati by Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), which has a collection of over 5,500 scriptures is a case in point.
The process involves three stages and helps in preserving them for years with causing any damages. Let’s take a look here-
🔺For this, every leave is cleaned with a dry brush and a natural spirit is applied on it to make it very clean by ensuring that there is no tiny particle of dust on it.
🔺Then specific oils are applied to the leaves, where they are preserved for a maximum period of time due to the wetness they got from the oils.
🔺After this the palm leaves are numbered and they are later scanned with latest scanning machine to manuscript them.
The TTD has added new buildings under manuscript project to preserve the palm leave scripts for a period of 500 years, where the scriptures are preserved in lockers in bunker-type-constructions.
According to the officials concerned, as many as 3,370 palm leave scriptures have been scanned so far, out of 5,500 scriptures brought from the archeological department.
The above said scriptures consist of about 2,11,313 palm leaves, the officials said.
The TTD has been taking steps to ensure the completion of scanning of the remaining scriptures within two months by allotting staff with a sufficient technical assistance.
The TTD also made a proposal to publish books with translated works of the above said palm leave scriptures, where it will pave way to the students who wanted pursue Ph.d (Doctor of Philosophy) in the near future.
The prestigious project under the supervision of Veda Viswavidyalayam and the TTD with the support of Sanatana Jeevan Trust has got nationwide recognition, where the scriptures have been categorized subject wise and gave numbers to them in order to preserve them.
The name of the donors will be mentioned on the lockers where the palm leaves will be preserved and special care has been taken by the officials concerned to maintain the room temperature between 18 to 24 degrees to maintain the wetness of the leaves.