A multi-disciplinary team has utilized multispectral imaging and AI to reconstruct text from 9th-century Grantha-Malayalam palimpsests found in coastal Kerala. The hidden layers contain a previously unknown Sanskrit work titled Lavana-Sagara-Mimamsa, which details the systematic mapping of ocean salinity gradients and coastal geochemical variations along the Arabian Sea.
The manuscript describes how ancient mariners used specific gravity measurements and mineral residue analysis to predict oceanic currents and seasonal changes in fish migration. This discovery provides the first written evidence of a formalized science of marine geochemistry in ancient India, which was likely used to optimize both maritime trade routes and large-scale coastal salt production.