What are the Agastya leaves?
The Agastya leaves are said to have been written by Agastya, a sage (rishi) of ancient India, on palm (palmyra palm) leaves, foretelling the name, life and fate of each person who would visit him in the future. In the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India, there are “Nadi reading” houses said to keep these leaves, where people can supposedly have their own leaf found and read to them.
Agastya is a legendary sage who appears in Indian myths and epics, deeply revered by the Tamil people as the one who brought learning and language to southern India.
How Nadi reading works
In Nadi reading, the visitor’s thumbprint is first taken, and based on it a bundle of stored leaves is found. The reader reads out what is written on the leaves one by one, and as the visitor answers “yes” or “no,” the leaves are narrowed down to the one matching their name, family and so on. When the person’s own leaf is found, a prophecy of their life written in old Tamil verse is read out, revealing everything from past events and future fate to the deeds of past lives, it is said.
The boom in Japan and doubts
The Agastya leaves were introduced in Japan through books and other media in the 1990s and became a major topic as a mystical story that “my fate was written thousands of years ago.” Even today, tours to India and readings in Japan are offered.
On the other hand, it has been pointed out that gradually gathering information about a person from their “yes” and “no” answers while searching for the leaf works the same way as “cold reading,” a technique that uses conversation to make it seem one has divined things about a person. It is also explained that the surviving leaves themselves are not thousands of years old; because palm leaves deteriorate within a few centuries, they have been copied over and over. As a book of prophecy, it is a mysterious presence alongside the Prophecies of Nostradamus and Prince Shotoku’s Miraiki.
