Rare skill: A man strings lontar palm leaves together.The strong
smell of tinkih traditional Balinese herbal oil fills a room in
the Bali Cultural Agency’s office in Denpasar, where a team of
dedicated experts repair centuries-old lontar palm leaf
manuscripts containing precious literary assets. The repaired
lontar manuscripts, totaling 3,000 pieces stored at the agency’s
library, are to be scanned and uploaded into a digital library,
making them accessible to any reader across the world when the
project is complete. Led by Ron Jenkins, a theater professor at
Wesleyan University in the US, the team involves Balinese
scholars I Nyoman Catra, Dewa Made Dharmawan, both lecturers at
the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Denpasar, Elizabeth
Ridolfo from the Internet Archive Foundation and a number of
staff from the agency. “It will be quite difficult work since
many of the lontar are in poor condition because of humidity and
other factors,” Jenkins told The Jakarta Post early last week.
Bali has a rich tradit