Developing Database of the Pali Canon from the Selected Palm-leaf Manuscripts Method of Reading and Transliterating ambiguous letters in palm-leaf manuscripts

Abstract

Palm-leaf manuscripts have been the primary means of preserving contents of the Pāli Canon for a long time and are invaluable material to Buddhism and Buddhist Studies. However, a large volume of the manuscripts was not well preserved and recorded in a format practical for study or usage. Even with an extensive history of Pāli studies by modern scholars, the creation of a database of palm-leaf manuscripts of the Pāli Canon has never been systematically accomplished and is relatively new in the field of Pāli and Buddhist Studies.
This article describes the knowledge acquired from the database development, based on collecting relevant information; illustrates the issues related to the method of reading and transliterating ambiguous letters in palm-leaf manuscripts; and presents case studies and solutions to the task of reading and performing data entry of the Dīghanikāya and using Khom and Tham script manuscripts preserved in Thailand.