Thalpathe Piliyam

තල්පත් පිළියම් (Thalpathe Piliyam)

Palm-leaf Remedies

Publication

Author	Multiple traditional medicine practitioners (compiled by Department of Ayurveda)
Language	Sinhala (Vols. I–XX); Tamil (Vol. XXI)
Published	1992–present (21 volumes)
Publisher	Department of Ayurveda, Government of Sri Lanka
Place	Colombo
Total pages	Unknown (21 volumes)

Cannabis Content

Regions documented	Sri Lanka
Preparations	Cannabis in 267 formulations: pills (guli), pastes (kalka), decoctions (kashaya), powders (choorna), fresh juices (swarasa), oils (thel), poultices (lepa/paththu), fumigation (vedu), nutritional preparations (basna)
Uses documented	Gastrointestinal disorders, nervous system disorders, respiratory conditions, circulatory disorders, reproductive disorders, fever, diabetes, epilepsy, cancer, skin diseases, serpent bites, urinary disorders

Access

Original held at	Navinna Research Institute; Institute of Indigenous Medicine, Rajagiriya (ola leaf manuscripts). Published volumes held by Department of Ayurveda and university libraries across Sri Lanka.

The Thalpathe Piliyam (තල්පත් පිළියම්, "Palm-leaf Remedies") is a twenty-one-volume compilation of traditional medical formulae published by the Department of Ayurveda of the Government of Sri Lanka, beginning in 1992. The series transcribes and organises drug formulations recorded on ola leaf (palm-leaf) manuscripts donated by families of traditional medicine practitioners. It is the largest published collection of Sri Lankan indigenous medical formulae and contains at least 267 formulations that include Cannabis sativa as an ingredient.

Origins

The Thalpathe Piliyam was compiled from ola leaf manuscripts held at two institutional collections: the Navinna Research Institute and the library of the Institute of Indigenous Medicine in Rajagiriya (a suburb of Colombo). The manuscripts had been donated to the Department of Ayurveda by practitioners who held them as family property. Traditional medicine in Sri Lanka operates through hereditary lineages (paramparā), each specialising in particular domains: Akshi roga wedakama (eye diseases), Sarpa wedakama (serpent bites), Davum pilissum wedakama (burns), Unmaada chikitsa (insanity) and others. The formulae compiled in these volumes represent the documented knowledge of multiple such lineages.

The first volume was published in 1992 by the Department of Ayurveda with financial and technical support from the World Health Organization. Publication continued over subsequent years until all twenty-one volumes were issued. Twenty volumes are in Sinhala; the twenty-first is in Tamil.

Cannabis content

Diddeniya and Kulatunga (2021), working at the Institute of Indigenous Medicine whose library supplied part of the source material, conducted the only published systematic review of cannabis content across all twenty-one volumes. They identified 267 formulations containing cannabis as a measured ingredient and a further 13 formulations using cannabis as a grinding medium, for a total of 280 formulations involving the plant.

The formulations treat conditions across the gastrointestinal tract (49.23% of formulations), the nervous system (40.77%), the circulatory system (7.69%), the reproductive system (6.54%) and the respiratory system (5.77%), with 22.69% acting on other conditions. Some formulations act on multiple body systems. Specific diseases and symptoms treated include indigestion, worm infestations, piles, diarrhoea, cough, asthma, hiccup, catarrh, epilepsy, cardiac ailments, anaemia, skin diseases, ulcers, gynaecological disorders, subfertility, fever, diabetes, cancer, serpent bites and urinary disorders.

The most common preparatory method is guli (pills), accounting for 48.07% of formulations. Other methods include kalka (pastes, 12.69%), swarasa (fresh juices, 11.15%), choorna (powders, 9.23%), kashaya (decoctions, 8.46%), thel (oils, 6.15%), lepa/paththu (poultices, 2.69%) and other methods including basna (nutritional preparations) and vedu (fumigation, 1.72%).

Cannabis is used at low concentrations in the majority of formulations. Of the 254 formulations where cannabis percentage could be calculated, 164 (63.08%) contain 5% or less cannabis by ingredient weight. Only two formulations (0.77%) contain more than 20%.

Relationship to other Sri Lankan medical texts

The Thalpathe Piliyam draws on the same tradition as the classical Sinhalese medical texts listed by Weliange (2018), but it is not a single-author work or a text from any specific historical period. It is a modern government compilation of formulae that had been transmitted within practitioner families on palm-leaf manuscripts, many of unknown date. The older named texts in the tradition include the Sarartha Sangrahaya attributed to King Buddhadasa (4th century AD), the Yogarnavaya and Prayagorathnavaliya (both 1232) and the Vaidyacintamani (1707). The relationship between specific formulae in the Thalpathe Piliyam and those in the named historical texts has not been studied.

Other academic work drawing on the Thalpathe Piliyam includes studies of dental caries treatments referencing the Sarartha Samgraha, Bhaisajja Manjusa, Prayogaratnavali, Yogarnava and Varayogasara alongside all 21 volumes, and studies of indigenous pressure points (Nila) cross-referencing the Yogarnawaya and the Thalpathe Piliyam series.

The ola leaf tradition

Ola (ඕල) refers to the prepared leaves of the talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera) or the palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer), used across South and Southeast Asia as a writing surface before the introduction of paper. In Sri Lanka, ola leaf manuscripts were the standard medium for recording religious, literary, astrological and medical texts for centuries. The leaves were dried, treated, cut into strips and inscribed with a metal stylus; the incised letters were then filled with carbon ink. Ola manuscripts are vulnerable to insect damage, humidity and handling, and survival rates are uncertain.

The Department of Ayurveda's decision to transcribe and publish these manuscripts in the Thalpathe Piliyam series was an act of preservation. Many of the formulae had existed only as single copies held within practitioner families. The WHO's involvement reflects an international interest in documenting traditional medical knowledge before manuscript losses rendered it unrecoverable.

Limitations

This page is based entirely on the description provided by Diddeniya and Kulatunga (2021). The Landrace.Wiki project has not examined any volume of the Thalpathe Piliyam directly. The series is published in Sinhala (and one volume in Tamil) and has not been translated into English. The following remain unknown:

• The titles and subject matter of individual volumes
• The total number of formulations across all volumes (267 is the cannabis subset only)
• The dating of individual ola leaf manuscripts from which the formulae were transcribed
• Which specific practitioner lineages contributed manuscripts
• Whether the cannabis-containing formulations overlap with or differ from those in the named historical texts (Sarartha Sangrahaya, Yogarnavaya, etc.)
• The total page count of the series

The published volumes are held by the Department of Ayurveda and by the Institute of Indigenous Medicine library in Rajagiriya. Availability outside Sri Lanka is unknown.