The Other Way Round: From Print to Manuscript

Abstract

The Tirumurukkāṟṟuppaṭai, possibly dated to the 7 th century, is one of the earliest Tamil texts to have been published in the first half of 19 th c. in Tamil Nadu. It is a poem in 317 lines praising the god Murukaṉ and it has been popular in at least three different circles as one among the Pattuppāṭṭu of the so-called Caṅkam corpus, as part of the canon of devotional Tamil Śaiva texts (the Tirumuṟai), and as a devotional text of its own, independent of Śaivism. Among the more than fifty extant manuscripts from the Tirumurukkāṟṟuppaṭai that I have been so far able to examine, I had the surprise to find that four are in fact palm-leaf copies of earlier printed editions. This fact raises several questions that I will try to address in this paper. Why would one have ordered a manuscript copy of a printed book? Is it related to economical, religious or ritual preoccupations? Was ōlai (palm-leaf) cheaper than paper? Was the printed book no more available? What was the use of such a manuscript? Are there other such manuscripts in India?