Palm Leaf Painting

Palm leaf paintings are very ancient in Orissa. In Orissa the Palm Leaf illustrations are mainly of two types,simple engravings or illustrations in pure line on palm leaf and engraving with colour fillings.


The Talapatrachitras or the palm leaf engravings consist of frozen linear drawing as illustrations of manuscripts. In these engravings, colours are muted and play a very minor part. Where colours are at all applied, they are just painted either to emphasize the inscriptions, or to fill up blank space. In Orissa, manuscripts were written on palm leaves even during the Mughal period when the paper was freely available.

In the limited space of the oblong palm leaf with a small width, human figures completed with details of hair style and dress, animals, flowers and trees are executed with great precision and beauty, the tool of this art is a sharp style and it needs a remarkably steady hand to be able to wield this tool on thin strip of leaf.