Palm Leaf Manuscript Museum, Thiruvananthapuram

The Palm Leaf Manuscript Museum in Thiruvananthapuram, set in a 300-year-old Travancore-era building, displays palm-leaf records from the collection of Kerala's archaeology department. It is described as the world's first and largest museum of its kind, with more than one crore palm leaves dating from 1249 to 1896 that cover administration, land sales and leases, taxes, medicine, punishments, agriculture and trade in the Venad, Travancore, Cochin and Malabar regions.

Eight themed galleries guide visitors through the material. The first traces how the Malayalam script grew from Brahmi, and transliterations let old scripts such as Vattezhuthu and Kolezhuthu be read in Malayalam and English. Later galleries show records of canals and dams, tax reforms, schools and hospitals, epidemics of smallpox and cholera, the Attingal revolt of 1721, the Kulachal war of 1741 and treaties with the British, and a request to Cochin for 2,000 guns in 1780. The last gallery holds the Mathilakam records of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple.