The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c10.313

v1.c10.313

**Writing materials :** Writing is not a subject which can be expected to be shown in sculptures, except in the form of inscriptions. There are, nevertheless, indications of both reading and writing in groups of human figures which are unmistakable. One in particular deserves special mention. It represents a youthful maiden standing under a tree and writing something with a reed pen on an oblong tablet. The figure is now in the Museum of the [113] Asiatic Society, and a sketch of it is shown in Illustration No. 117. Looking to the practice, common among the Uriyās of the present day, of writing with an iron style on palm leaves, it might be said that the statue does not represent writing, but drawing. The practice, however, of writing with white chalk on black wooden tablets, or with ink on white tablets, which, among the grocers of Bengal and in the village schools of Northern India, is still universally prevalent, was well known in ancient India, and the tablet did then occupy, as it does now, the place of the modern European slate and the box wood tablets of ancient Greece, on which pupils practised the art of drawing with the graphis or the *penicillus*. Raghunandana, in his *Vyavahāra Tattva*, quotes a verse from the *Saṃhitā* of Vyāsa, which says, "the first draft of a document should be written on a wooden tablet, or on the ground, and after correction of what is redundant and supplying what is defective, it should be engrossed on leaf, or other material, on which it is permanently to remain".¹⁵⁵ And there is no reason to doubt that the Uriyās were familiar with it. The practice of writing on the ground or on boards, is common now in every part of Orissa. The pen shown in the sculpture is a plain cylindrical rod with a pointed end, but without the flat cutting top so peculiar to the modern Uriyā style. For materials for pens, the *Yoginī Tantra* condemns bamboo twigs and bronze styles as unfortunate. Copper styles are better as leading to wealth, but the gold is the best as the most auspicious ; the reed pen (*vṛnnala*) is, however, preferable as conducive to intelligence. References are also made to ornamental wood and brass as materials for pens, and they are required to be cylindrical and from eight to ten fingers long,¹⁵⁶ but without any flattened top, and the pen in the sculpture corresponds with this rule. It is worthy of note that Uriyā women of the present day are more proficient in reading and writing than their sister-hood in Bengal. Even the courtezans of Cuttack attach more importance to education than their representatives in Calcutta. When I visited the place two years ago, they had three schools for the education of their daughters, in the Bengali language, and those institutions were well attended. The like of them I have not seen in Bengal or the North-Western Provinces. The necessity for these schools arises from the circumstance of Bengali songs being held in great esteem by the higher classes of the people, and it being held *infra dignitate* on the part of dancing girls to sing other than Bengali songs. A similar feeling in Bengal makes the dancing girls think it a point of honor here always to sing Urdu songs, and accordingly to learn to read and write Urdu. I cannot venture to say if it is a feeling of that description that makes Italian songs most fashionable in the musical circles of Europe; but certain it is that in every one of these cases, that which is not easily understood, is preferred to what comes home to the admirers of music. Should the sculpture be taken for a representation of a lady engaged in drawing or painting, it would still be of great interest as an index to the social condition of the people and a lithic proof of the descriptions which make Sītā, Uṣā, Ratnāvalī, and other ancient heroines proficient in painting likenesses.