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| I went to Pondicherry to help set up a project to scan 8000 palm leaf manuscripts. |
The French Institute of Pondicherry |
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Main reading room |
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| Dr. Sambandan |
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The palm leaf manuscripts |
Muttukumar brushes the palmleaves with lemon oil |
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Worms eat the manuscripts |
Muttukumar demonstrates - he cuts a notch in his thumbnail |
and uses a steel point to inscribe the leaves |
the notched thumbnail pushes the scribe along |
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some of the manuscripts are written in tiny type |
Arumugaswami and the imaging team |
The institute has paper manuscripts as well |
Dr. Sambandan is a priest and brings prasadam each day |