The article focuses on the chemical composition of birch bark and its use as a historic writing material. The use of birch bark has been prevalent in ancient northern India, Nepal, central Asia and north-east Europe. Birch bark consists of mainly organic constituents. Birch bark contains little cellulose but good amount of waxes and oil making it highly resistant towards deterioration. The presence of lignin and rosin in the birch bark makes it quite acidic.
This paper discusses pigments used in Indian palm leaf manuscripts. Formerly it was believed that pigments for palm leaf illustrations were mostly sourced from plant extracts – a believe that is still widespread in India. This paper reports the identification of pigments of an illustrated palm leaf manuscript (eighteenth – nineteenth century) collected from the east coast of India. As Raman spectra of many pigments gave too high background noise, the identification was mostly accomplished through SEM-EDX and FTIR spectroscopy. The analytical findings indicated that both mineral colours and plant extracts were sourced for Indian palm-leaf manuscripts. Analysis indicated the use of lamp black for black, indigo for blue, vermillion for red, orpiment for yellow, china clay for white and a mixture of orpiment and indigo for green coloration in the illustrations. The data has improved our knowledge of historic pigments used in palm leaf illustrations. As some of the pigments are either photosensitive or darken due to atmospheric pollution, necessary preventive conservation measures need to be adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]