Ttha and Writing on Palm Leaf

The material a script is written on leaves its mark on the letters, and the manuscript tradition Ranjana belongs to used palm leaf for centuries before paper became usual in the Kathmandu Valley. A palm leaf page is long and narrow, is written with ink applied to the surface or incised and then inked, and splits along its fibres if a stroke cuts across them too hard. Scripts developed on that material tend towards strokes that run with the grain and away from long unsupported horizontals, and the strong head bar of the northern Brahmic scripts is often explained in part by the constraints of the writing surface and the tools used on it.

Ranjana's own combination of a heavy bar with fine connecting strokes and a vertical emphasis belongs to that inheritance, developed further into an ornamental hand once the script's principal work was display writing rather than running text. Paper changed what was possible and did not change the letterforms much, because by then the shapes carried the authority of the tradition, and a display hand is valued for looking like itself. The change of material also changed the shape of the page rather than the shapes on it. Paper allowed a taller format and longer lines, and the ornamental use of Ranjana on covers and headings suited that better than the narrow palm leaf strip had.