CEYLON (SINHALESE) OLAS OR BOOK MANUSCRIPTS ON EARLY MEDICINES AND HOW THEY WERE MADE By ANDREAS NELL, M.D. M.R.C.S. (Eng .) KANDY, CEYLON AT the request of Dr. Casey Wood, and folk-lore are purely local compilations, / wh° has keen making a collection as is the geography, although even that Z—of Sinhalese books and manu- subject is embroidered with legendary tales. JL -\%_qeript.s for McGill University, I The languages of the olas books are three, have prepared the following account of the Sanskrit, Pali and Sinhalese. All the Ola. It is not complete, of course, but may religious and historical works are in Pali assist readers to gain an idea of that interest- (the language of Gautama Buddha), while ing form of literature. some of the poems are also written in Pali Ancient as well as modern Sinhalese olas with paraphrases in Sinhalese. Sanskrit is (manuscripts) are written on tough, papyrus- employed for secular works, some of which like strips prepared from the immature, are written entirely in verse; others have a unopened fronds (spathe) of the Talipot Sinhalese prose paraphrase following each and Palmyra palms. However, printing of the verses. is now so cheap and so universal that it is The text of the local legends, the folk-lore, likely to supersede the older method. the geography and most of the poetry is in The store of old manuscripts in monastic Sinhalese script, the character of which and other libraries of Ceylon is considerable, helps to date a manuscript that lacks the but many ancient and medieval olas have usual colophon on the last page. This tablet gone abroad, chiefly to Petrograd, Berlin, usually furnishes the title of the ola, the Paris, London and America. The monastic name of the author, the name of the patron libraries contain work of all sorts, as they ordering the manuscript, the name of the were for many centuries the sole literary copyist and the date of the original in terms depositories. Recently, the Government of of the Buddhist era. Ceylon has prohibited the export of impor- Some original works were composed as tant olas. early as the fourth century a .d ., but no The subjects treated are religion, history, ola-book of that period has so far been magic, geography, astronomy, medicine, found, and the earliest known mss . cannot grammar, folk-lore and local legends, crafts, be more than seven hundred years old, poetry and short tales. judged by the character of the Sinhalese All the Ceylon chronicles are a mixture script in which it was written, i.e., about of myth, legend and actual history, but the a .d . 1250. realities in them are available, to serious The books themselves, ancient, medieval students who study them in the light of and modern, appear as flat bundles of other records, especially those of contem- oblong leaves, uniformly 2*4 inches wide porary archeology. but varying in length from a few inches to Few of the books on astronomy, magic, 3 feet. The leaves are held between two medicine and grammar are indigenous; board covers by a cord (wound round the most of them, as well as much of the poetry, book) attached at one end to a button or are copies of or adaptations from Sanskrit medallion, and at the other to a ball, tassel originals imported from India and copied or or simple knot. recast by monastic scribes. The preparation of every part of the On the other hand, the books on history ola, as indeed of every appliance directly or indirectly connected with it, is definitely other end, up and down, until one surface is prescribed by custom, centuries old. thoroughly smooth and well polished. The In the Tamil districts of Northern Ceylon strip is then turned over and the same the leaves are made from the Palmyra Palm treatment applied to the remaining surface. (Borassus flabillifer), called, in the vernac- The polished strips are now carefully cut ular Tamil, Panna-maran. These palms, into the required sizes and packed in piles. owing to the dry and hot climate of that Holes are next cut or punched in them for the region, seem to furnish the best paperlike binding cords, and these perforations are material for inscription. Elsewhere in Ceylon made midway between the longitudinal both ancient and modern, olas are prepared sides, their exact positions being determined from the leaves of the Talipot Palm (Corypha by an ancient rule embodied in a Sanskrit umbraculifera) in Sinhalese, Tal-gaha. Of quatrain, whose translation reads some- these leaf preparations, two kinds are in use, thing like this: “Fold the leaf in three; an unfinished variety, or karakola, and the unfold; again fold in four; between the finished product, the puskola. The former creases made by the foldings, place the is chiefly used as a copy book by the holes.” One ola thus perforated is the pat- child learning to write with the blunt stylus, tern for the rest of the leaves (which, of or ulkatuwa. As soon as he is proficient in course, are not to be creased) and of the making letters of correct shape, the pupil is two flat boards or other form of covers, permitted to wield the sharp stylus on the the latter to be slightly larger than the ola puskola. The copy letters are first traced by mass. Wooden pegs are now fitted into the the teacher and the scholar repeatedly two holes previously made in one board goes over them until his stylus pierces the cover, the leaves strung on them, and the ola. second cover clamped in place, the whole The puskola is prepared as follows: The forming a firm, compact parcel. Finally, the palm spathe being cut down just as it is edges of the bookleaves are singed with a hot about to open, the immature leaves are iron, to remove stray fibres, the char also removed, the segments separated, and each acting as a preservative and a precaution midrib pulled out so that long, leafy strips against the attacks of insects. are obtained. These are loosely made into Each leaf of the ola is inscribed on both rolls and placed in a copper cauldron of sides, making two pages. Sometimes, instead cold water, which is slowly raised to the of keeping a large number of leaves in stock boiling point and then allowed to boil or and in one cover, a small olas of a few paged simmer for an hour. The strips are now leaves are selected, bound with proper dried in the sun for three days and then boards, cord and button ready for the packed in reels about twelve inches across. copyist or author. These booklets are used The leaves are then exposed to the dews for generally to write a prescription, clinical three nights that they may acquire the notes or address. Paging in Sinhalese is suppleness demanded for the finished ola. It done, not by figures as in English, but by is not uncommon at this stage to store the the letters of the alphabet. olas in large rolls, but usually the prepara- The perforations in the pages provided tion is completed as follows: across the tops for the binding cords are often separated of two upright posts a short length of the from the writing space by some form of cylindrical and very hard Areca nut palm, decoration made with the stylus and gen- rubbed very smooth, is fastened about three erally stained red. Sometimes anatomical or feet from the ground. The ola leaf is now other illustrations of the text are introduced weighted at the stalk end with a heavy here. stone, stretched over the Areca roller and a Good ola writing in Sinhalese has been young monk or a neophyte pulls it by the compared to a string of pearls; the letters should be evenly formed, regular in size and was removed with cotton or clean chaff, in line; and it may be said, in passing, that leaving only the pigment in the scratched the ordinary manuscript is so written in lines. The oil employed for this mixture striking contrast to the often slovenly and was prepared from the exudations of certain illegible chirography of the European. trees, the lampblack by a special process The scribe, if right handed, cuts a notch invented many ages ago. in his left thumbnail, which has been The component leaves of an ola are not allowed to grow long for the purpose, in the bound at the edges, as are modern paper- angle of which he rests his writing instru- printed books, but as previously stated, ment (the stylus), like the sculling oar in the leaves are even more firmly held together the stern of a punt. by means of a cord run through the two Two segments of the stylus were always holes in the ola mass and continued through made of steel, a sharp, cutting edge along corresponding perforations in the front and one border of the upper, expanded portion back covers. These covers were made of or handle and the lowest part of the shaft plain, carved, painted (oil painting was with its pointed tip for scratching or engrav- practiced in Ceylon several centuries b .c .) ing the letters and decorations on the ola. or lac-decorated wood, as well as of chased The body of the stylus was either of brass or silver and carved ivory. iron damascened with silver or copper. The binding cords were of plaited (native) Rarely an abbot or a nobleman had one cotton thread or they were manufactured made of silver, while the royal stylus was of from the tough fibres of the so-called gold.