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Parabaik and Palm leaf Manuscripts
Parabaiks are used to record astrological and religious writings. The parabaiks are a rich source material on costumes, architecture, social and religious life of Myanmar.
Palm leaves have been the most popular writing material in India and Southeast Asia countries where Buddhism and Indian culture spread. Varying temperatures and humidity and insect destruction have not allowed the survival of early manuscripts. The earliest known surviving palm-leaf is from the 10th century. Large collections of palm-leaf manuscripts can be found in South and Southeast Asia. Most of the collections are in monasteries, libraries and historical institutes. Often, these places have no environmental controls and preservation programs to preserve the intellectual heritage of a rich and old culture.
After the introduction of paper, the use of palm leaf was greatly reduced. However, for certain religious writings, palm-leaf is still being used.
The palm leaves most widely used for writing is the palmyra and fan palm.
Parabaik and palm leaf manuscripts are important in the rich and old tradition and cultural history of Southeast Asia.
Preservation
For preservation, libraries and archives are using substitution and reformatting. The methods of substitution being used are recopying by hand, typing, microfilming, photocopying, offset facsimile copies, printing in book form and digital reformatting.
Copying by hand onto new palm leaf or parabaik has been the traditional method of preserving manuscript texts. Manual copying is a laborious and monotonous process that can lead to dropped letters or lines. This is also true with typing of texts.
Users prefer bound photocopies of the manuscripts which can be borrowed or photocopied.
Offset facsimile editions can be made of rare manuscripts. However, problems with offset plates and quality paper are problems that have to be dealt with properly.
Carefully collated and edited editions of traditional text and manuscripts can be printed in book form to preserve information.
Microfilming is the choice of Southeast Asian librarians and archivists because of the stable technology. However, film supplies are expensive and hard to acquire locally. A portable microfilm setup can be carried to different monasteries for preservation of manuscripts. Fluctuating electrical voltages in the monasteries can affect the quality of lighting during capture.
Digital reformatting is an area being experimented upon by different institutions.
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