Plants used for palm-leaf manuscript production and conservation in South and Southeast Asia: a review of the literature

Aiming to reconstruct local historical and modern production of palm-leaf manuscripts (PLM) preliminarily dated from the 14th to the beginning of the 20th century CE in South (S) and Southeast (SE) Asia, we faced a great volume of publications available in ca 20 languages, which briefly describe the manuscript production process and/or focus on PLM preservation traditions. However, we found a lack of publications with a botanical or ethnobotanical focus, and there are none that thoroughly document the detailed process of PLM production. Consequently, we conducted the first comprehensive analysis of literature and online sources dating from 1753 to 2024, covering approximately 270 years, and compiled a list of about 300 publications concerning both modern and traditional methods of palm-leaf manuscript production and preservation. By performing a geographical analysis and mapping of all retrieved botanical and ethnobotanical data related to this research, we compiled lists of plants used for PLM production and conservation in S and SE Asia. These lists are region-specific (e.g. for Bengal, Gujarat, Odisha, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and South India as a whole), and country-specific (e.g. for Sri Lanka and Indonesia). The lists of plant names mentioned in the analyzed publications range from as few as three in Nepal and Malaysia to as many as 79 in India overall. This work will enhance our understanding of traditional and modern plant usage related to the PLM cultures of South and Southeast Asia.