I mentioned that I do historical research as a side gig. In the comments of the linked post, @Torico asked for examples of the kind of research requests I get. Here I am posting a research assignment and my response, unedited except to remove anything that might identify the author.
A few notes first
- I don't provide sources to the authors I work with unless asked to - they are paying me to read the sources, synthesize the information and tell them what they need to know and only what they need to know. This post draws from a variety of resources that I found online - I do save all my links and notes so if you are curious about anything in particular just ask and I should be able to provide a source.
- The images were intended as a prompt for the author and not for publication / public consumption, so these were just lifted off Google image search. I claim no ownership of these images here and am including them as fair use in reporting on my research work.
Research Assignment RE Translating the Kama Sutra
[for a novel set in 1821]
I want to know about preservation techniques at the time for ancient manuscripts. What would her ancient manuscripts have looked like? I doubt she could actually possess the 3rd century - but maybe she has a transcription of it from WHEN? I want the visuals - what does the ancient text (it's only a fragment of the Kama Sutra) look like - what does it smell like? when she's translating, does she spread it out sheet by sheet? Whatever plausible details you can come up with to bring to life a scene where she's doing some translation...
My response on the Kama Sutra and ancient Indian manuscripts
First off, she probably could not have had the entire Kama Sutra manuscript anyway so it is good that you have her with just a fragment of the ancient text. The history here is that the Kama Sutra had fallen out of favor centuries earlier, and a later compilation / updating of the Kama Sutra had pretty much totally taken its place in India. The MUCH more commonly used and referred to text was the Ananga-Ranga, 15th century, which was still written in Sanskrit but a much more accessible form of Sanskrit than the ancient form used in the original Kama Sutra. The Ananga-Ranga was widely copied and translated into Persian, Urdu, and other languages. The Ananga-Ranga was pretty close to the original but did not emphasize female pleasure as much as the Kama Sutra did. Eventually the noted British linguist Sir Richard Burton took an interest in the Ananga-Ranga and was working towards a translation of it when he noticed that the Ananga-Ranga kept referring back to an earlier work, the Kama Sutra. Sir Burton tried to find a copy of the Kama Sutra but there was not a complete copy anywhere (in the late 1800s but I am sure it was pretty much the same story in the early 1800s). He basically took 5 fragmentary copies that his sources were able to turn up in Sanskrit archives and combined them to come up with (what we think) is the complete work. So yeah, if she has a portion of the actual Kama Sutra it would have to be a fragmentary / incomplete portion.
As far as what it looked / smelled like: It was most likely either a copy on hemp paper, or (and probably much cooler / sexier / better suited for your purposes) a copy on palm-leaf. I am going to skip describing the hemp paper, as even very ancient Sanskrit manuscripts written on hemp paper look surprisingly like they were just written on modern paper.
Palm-leaf manuscripts: I have pasted some images at the bottom to help you get the picture, of a complete and bound manuscript, what an individual "page" looked like, and how you opened and read one. Palm leafs were cut into rectangles, dried and "cured" (smoked) to form thin rectangular pages. The pages were then polished. The pages varied in size and shape but the average was 18-19 inches long and 1 1/2" wide. There is a noticeable curve across the width of the sheet, and they are relatively rigid across the length. The letters were first scratched into the pages with a stylus, then powdered graphite, charcoal or plant based dyes were rubbed into the scratched letters, then the page was polished again. Interestingly, the curved and slanted nature of the Devanagari script used to write down Sanskrit may have been an adaptation specifically for writing on palm leaf - straight angles tend to rip and tear the palm leaf, while the curved and slanted script does not rip or tear as much. Aromatic oils with insect repellent qualities were also often applied to the finished pages before polishing. Each page then had either a single hole cut in the middle, or two holes cut some distance from either end of the page, through which string(s) was/were threaded holding the whole manuscript together (images of both styles included below). The end caps that bound the manuscripts together were typically wood, often lacquered (lacquer is an Indian product, a glossy varnish that is made from the secretions of the lac insect), although they could be made from any material (bone, ivory, etc.). The total width of the bound manuscript varied quite a lot, obviously depending on the number of individual pages, with some manuscripts exceeding 15" in thickness!
Of note to you is that palm-leaf manuscripts degrade over time, with the typical life expectancy of a palm-leaf page ranging from just a few decades to ~600 years depending on the skill with which it was made, the climate / humidity of the area it was stored, and insect/rodent activity. The most common causes of degradation are mold (in damper climates or humid storage), the pages becoming so fragile that they split (due to extreme age in even dry/colder climates), and insect/rodent damage (literally eating holes in the pages). Older palm leaf manuscripts that become brittle can be restored by rubbing oils into them, but this darkens the page and can only be done so many times before it becomes illegible. In the case of a manuscript damaged by high humidity or mold, individual pages often stick together in blocks. Use also causes damage, as the friction of the string running through the hole every time a page is turned can lead to splitting. You could work that in, she might very well end up splitting some of her pages while working on translating them.
In temples that had collections of Sanskrit manuscripts written on palm-leaf, they simply recopied the manuscripts every so often. Since the Kama Sutra had fallen out of use centuries before your time, the surviving (fragmentary) copies were likely damaged in one or more of the ways described above. Something that might be worth noting is that drier and colder areas are where the oldest surviving palm manuscripts have been found; Nepal and Tibet have produced the oldest palm manuscripts that still survive today. As far as smell, it is possible that some of the smell of the aromatic oils remained, particularly if it is a copy that had been rubbed with oils many times over the years to keep it from becoming fragile (in which case sections of the manuscript might be too dark to read from the staining effects of the oils). Oils used included camphor, citronella, castor, lemongrass, cedarwood, mustard, neem, eucalyptus, clove, and sesame. If the damage was from mold, it would be a moldy smell obviously.
I imagine you can get the details of how she would spread out pages from the images below. Things to think about are if she has access to single sheets that are no longer bound together, or a bound copy that is still strung together but is incomplete because of damage.
