Aluwikhara

In this very temple, on palm leaves, the Buddhist Bible – the Pali Canon – was recorded. Today the monk, in addition to the opportunity to see the cave temple itself, can show an ancient method of writing on palm leaves, and also write down your names using this technology.
This technology invented by Buddhist monks of antiquity is rather interesting: at first they scratched letters with a special pen on the dried palm leaf. Then, the sheet was covered with a special coal solution, and then washed with coconut oil and purified with rice flour. After that, holes were made in palm leaves, a rope was passed through and they were sewn together in a book. They say that the scripts on palm leaves can be preserved for thousands of years! Books on palm leaves were transferred to other countries – on the territory of modern Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
In many aspects of Buddhism doctrine stories and songs were included.
The Second Buddhist Council was gathered in about a hundred years. “Abhidhamma-Pitaka” had appeared on it as a consequence of the ideological split of the monastic community.
Written on palm leaves, the Canon appeared only on the Fourth Buddhist Council here, in Sri Lanka around 80 B.C. over four hundred years after the Buddha’s death.