History
Natal And Nadi Astrology
The Sages
The Palm Leaves
List Of Kandams
Why Do I Need A Nadi Reading
Naadi Palmleaf Astrology
Questionnaire

India has been the hub of spirituality from the beginning of time and has sustained the oral tradition of transmitting and dissemination knowledge from generation to generation. interestingly, over time a written tradition also coexisted, especially in respect of treatises and commentaries prepared by great teachers. So, over thousands of years, scribes recorded much of India's literary, scientific and astrological heritage. While granite slabs, copper plates and tree barks were used as a medium for recording information, the most readily available medium was dried, smoothed and smoke-treated leaves of palm, bai-lan talipot and olai.

Scribes carefully etched letters into the dried leaf with a stylus, in such a manner as to avoid splitting the leaf. Furthermore, the writing was almost always continuous, without any delimiters or separators between words. therefore, the reading of the manuscript required training, as well as understanding of the language, so that the lines could be split into words for easy reading. When the etching process was complete, a black sooty pigment of lampblack or turmeric was applied to enhance contrast and legibility.

To complete the book, the palm leaves were stacked and holes were drilled through the fragile leaves in the right and left lengthwise edges. The leaves were then bound together with a cord or rod and two wooded covers that were about 22 inches long and about 2 inches wide, were places top and bottom of stack. The end of the cord that was threaded through the holes was then wrapped tightly around the completed stack of leaves to hold them protectively in place.

Interestingly enough, even after paper was introduced into India, many manuscripts still retained this elongated, narrow look of the palm leaf book.

However, being organic in nature, palm leaf manuscripts are susceptible to decay and disintegration over time, so when left undisturbed in humid climates they would only last three or four centuries. Thus, when required, a new patron would commission scribes to accurately and tediously copy the precious manuscripts onto freshly treated palm-leaves. So, it was in this was that uncounted generations of scribes preserved much of India's vast intellectual and spiritual legacy.