Palm leaf manuscripts (Tamil: ஓலைச் சுவடி, Oriya: ତାଳପତ୍ର ପୋଥି,
Kannada: ತಾಳೆಗರಿ, Sinhala: පුස්කොළ ලෙඛන, Javanese: rontal,
Indonesian: lontar) are manuscripts made out of dried palm
leaves. They served as the paper of the ancient world in parts
of Asia as far back as the 5th century BCE. and possibly much
earlier. They were used to record actual and mythical narratives
in South Asia and in South East Asia. Initially knowledge was
passed down orally, but after the invention of alphabets and
their diffusion throughout South Asia, people eventually began
to write it down in dried and smoke treated palm leaves of
Palmyra palm or talipot palm. Once written down, each document
had a limited time before which the document had to be copied
onto new sets of dried palm leaves.[why?] With the spreading of
Indian culture to South East Asian countries such as Indonesia,
Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines,these nations became
home to collections of documents in palm leaf. In Indonesia the
palm-leaf manuscript is calle