OL AY, also Ola. TAM.
I Palm-leaves prepared for writing on. These are made smooth by being damped and then repeatedly drawn between two blocks of wood. The dried raw leaves are called Karak ola, and the finest prepared leaves, Pusk ola ; but Ola or Olay is the Tamil vernacular name by which the people designate the leaves, when pre pared for being written upon. These are prepared' from the leaves of the palmyra (I3orassus flabelli formis), the cocoanut tree, and the Talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera). The oldest Hindu author who alludes to writing on the Olay is Panini, a grammarian who resided at Arittuwarum, near the source of the Ganges. Pliny says expressly (lib. xiii. cap. 2) that the most ancient way of writing was upon leaves of palms, from which it is believed that the leaf (folium) of a book came to be synonymous with that of a plant. The Olay are written upon with a style, which is pointed with steel, and its-handle sometimes highly ornamented. During the operation of writing, the leaf is supported by the left hand, and the letters are cut or scratched upon its surface with the style, which is kept always in Um same position, and the leaf is moved to the let hand side by means of the thumb. To render the characters more legible, the engraved lines arc occasionally filled by smearing the leaves with: fresh cow-dung, which is tinged black by rubbing the lines over with cocoanut oil, or a mixture of (sit and charcoal powder ; and for the same object, in Ceylon, an oil called Doomale is sotnetimet rubbed on the letters with a burned rag. All the
sacred books of the Hindus, Burmese, Singhalese, etc., are still made of these Olay, some of them being highly ornamented. All accounts in the village revenue department, all grants of land, leases, and all the accounts in shops, are still kept on these leaves, and they are likewise sent as letters. Palm-leaf books are never much beyond two feet in length and two inches in breadth ; they arc said to last from one to four or five hundred years. In the Peninsula of India, the Olay arc prepared from the leaves of the palmyra palm ; the panam clay, which are taken while tender, and the flat portions being cut into strips, and freed from the ribs and woody tendons, are boiled and after wards dried, first in the shade and afterwards in the sun. In Ceylon, Olay are also made from the dried strips of the young leaves of the Talipot palm tree. The palmyra palm ola are called by the Singhalese Karak ola, and applied to the more ordinary purposes. But the still finer. .description, called Pusk olay, is prepared in the temples by the Samanero priests and novices, who, after damping the Karak ola, draw it tightly over the sharp edge of a board, so as to remove all inequalities, and render it polished and smooth.—Seeman.