languagehat.com : DIGITIZING BALINESE.
A post by Grace Neveu and Jake Johnson at Archive.org reports on a project to digitize all of Balinese literature (as this brief notice says, “They are in the running for being the first culture to have their entire literature go online, even current writings and lectures”): The documents are centuries-old lontar palm leaves incised on both sides with a sharp knife and then blackened with soot…. The writings consist of ordinary texts to sacred documents on religion, holy formulas, rituals, family genealogies, law codes, treaties on medicine (usadha), arts and architecture, calendars, prose, poems and even magic. The estimated 50,000 lontars are kept by members of the Puri (palace) family and high priests to ordinary families. Some are carefully kept as family heritages while others are left in dirty and dusty corners of houses. Digitizing the lontars makes them available to scholars and students and salvages the documents pantip from getting destroyed by insects or humidity, as many already have.
They are made of leaves of a species of palm. You strip the leaflets off the larger branch and trim them. You get a “leaf” that is long and narrow. Then you start writing your text onto the leaf, while it is still green, with a stylus. It cuts just barely pantip into the surface and that cut darkens. You continue onto the reverse sied. Then you rub both sides with soot to make the letters stand out. Then you bundle the leaves into packets – you can string them together to keep them in order, or just number them. The leaves dry well and hold up even in a humid climate. This style of book was the norm in India (and spread to Indonesia), which is why even in Tibet where they use paper for their books, the pages are long and narrow. Maybe content is magical but the process of making the book isn’t.
That technique must be reflected in the legend pantip of the origin of the Korean alphabet (the hangul ): having created this alphabet, the king had the characters written in honey on the leaves of a tree, in order to attract caterpillars which would eat both the honey and the leaf surface underneath, pantip so that the gullible people would think that the characters had appeared on the leaves by magic.
M-L, that chimes with the myth of how Chinese characters came into being, that they are derived from the lines in blocks of raw jade. The difference between the techniques is that there was never any mystery to anyone how the palm leaf books were written and made. I think writing carries a lot more weight in China than in India. The spoken form of language is what matters in India, as in making a prayer effectual or whatever. In China people tend to think of the written form as the essence of the word and the pronunication as provisional and secondary, except maybe in personal names.
The difference between the [Balinese and Korean] techniques pantip is that there was never any mystery to anyone how the palm leaf books were written and made. The Korean legend is about the origin of the hangul , not the origin pantip of books. The Korean king (or the people responsible for the legend) was familiar with (Chinese) writing, found on sheets of paper but also on largish flat natural objects – the earliest Chinese writing is found on the ventral parts of tortoise shells, pantip used for divination. The birch bark manuscripts of (I think) medieval Ukraine are another example of writing on thin flat objects pantip (perhaps in imitation of Chinese paper, which may have been known even though the technique for making it was not). In China people tend to think of the written form as the essence of the word The fact that the same written form can have several pronunciations depending on the “dialect” would encourage this interpretation. English or French speakers also tend to share this view in their own languages since the sound-to-spelling correspondences are often not obvious.
Archives Select Month January 2014 December pantip 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January pantip 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November pantip 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 200
A post by Grace Neveu and Jake Johnson at Archive.org reports on a project to digitize all of Balinese literature (as this brief notice says, “They are in the running for being the first culture to have their entire literature go online, even current writings and lectures”): The documents are centuries-old lontar palm leaves incised on both sides with a sharp knife and then blackened with soot…. The writings consist of ordinary texts to sacred documents on religion, holy formulas, rituals, family genealogies, law codes, treaties on medicine (usadha), arts and architecture, calendars, prose, poems and even magic. The estimated 50,000 lontars are kept by members of the Puri (palace) family and high priests to ordinary families. Some are carefully kept as family heritages while others are left in dirty and dusty corners of houses. Digitizing the lontars makes them available to scholars and students and salvages the documents pantip from getting destroyed by insects or humidity, as many already have.
They are made of leaves of a species of palm. You strip the leaflets off the larger branch and trim them. You get a “leaf” that is long and narrow. Then you start writing your text onto the leaf, while it is still green, with a stylus. It cuts just barely pantip into the surface and that cut darkens. You continue onto the reverse sied. Then you rub both sides with soot to make the letters stand out. Then you bundle the leaves into packets – you can string them together to keep them in order, or just number them. The leaves dry well and hold up even in a humid climate. This style of book was the norm in India (and spread to Indonesia), which is why even in Tibet where they use paper for their books, the pages are long and narrow. Maybe content is magical but the process of making the book isn’t.
That technique must be reflected in the legend pantip of the origin of the Korean alphabet (the hangul ): having created this alphabet, the king had the characters written in honey on the leaves of a tree, in order to attract caterpillars which would eat both the honey and the leaf surface underneath, pantip so that the gullible people would think that the characters had appeared on the leaves by magic.
M-L, that chimes with the myth of how Chinese characters came into being, that they are derived from the lines in blocks of raw jade. The difference between the techniques is that there was never any mystery to anyone how the palm leaf books were written and made. I think writing carries a lot more weight in China than in India. The spoken form of language is what matters in India, as in making a prayer effectual or whatever. In China people tend to think of the written form as the essence of the word and the pronunication as provisional and secondary, except maybe in personal names.
The difference between the [Balinese and Korean] techniques pantip is that there was never any mystery to anyone how the palm leaf books were written and made. The Korean legend is about the origin of the hangul , not the origin pantip of books. The Korean king (or the people responsible for the legend) was familiar with (Chinese) writing, found on sheets of paper but also on largish flat natural objects – the earliest Chinese writing is found on the ventral parts of tortoise shells, pantip used for divination. The birch bark manuscripts of (I think) medieval Ukraine are another example of writing on thin flat objects pantip (perhaps in imitation of Chinese paper, which may have been known even though the technique for making it was not). In China people tend to think of the written form as the essence of the word The fact that the same written form can have several pronunciations depending on the “dialect” would encourage this interpretation. English or French speakers also tend to share this view in their own languages since the sound-to-spelling correspondences are often not obvious.
Archives Select Month January 2014 December pantip 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January pantip 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November pantip 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 200
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