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Development of Nāgarī Script
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were written on perishable materials whereas important documents were incised on durable objects.
As regards the antiquity, a Bauddha tradition appraises of writing the canon on palm-leaves at the first Council held soon after the death of Buddha." The Buddhist Jätakas also refer to panna (parņa, leaf) as a popular writing material, which presumably represented palm-leaves. Hiuen-Tsiang (first half of the 7th Cent. A.D.) mentioned general use of palm-leaf as a writing material throughout the country. In the 11th centu Al-Beruni also noticed that, “The Hindus have in the south of their country a slender tree like the date and cocoa-nut- palms, bearing edible fruits and leaves of the length one yard and as broad as three fingers one put besides the other. They call these leaves tārī (tāla or tār=Borassus flabelli formis), and write on them.”?
Besides literary evidence, some of the earlier manuscripts have been discovered outside India. For example, the Horizui plam-leaf manuscript of the Skanda-purāna now kept in the Darbar Library at Kathamandu (Nepal) belongs to the 7th century A.D. Some fragments of Godfrew collection from Kashgar belongs at least to the 4th century A.D., as attested by palaeography and so shown by Hoernle. The Khotan copy of the Prākrit Dhammapad is the earliest known birch-bark manuscript, belonging as it does to about the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. 10 But, despite this evidence for the early existence of the palm-leaf or birch-bark manuscript, no specimen has survived in India, due to several destructive agencies, negligent preservation, and climatic conditions, which can be dated definitely prior to the 10th century A.D. According to R. B. Pandey, “It should be observed that the early manuscripts on palm-leaves are found mostly in the cold and dry countries and parts of India. No manuscript of a date earlier than the fifteenth century A.D. is found in the south due to the hot and humid climate of that part of India."11
In daily use leaves in their natural form were used; while for writing out the important works the leaves were specially prepared". They were first dried, then soaked or boiled in water for a considerable length of
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