Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c4.50

c4.50

In considering the question of the age and extent of the use of writing in India, it is important to point out that the want of suitable materials in the North at least, before the introduction of paper, must have been a great obstacle to its general use. The best material for writing on to be found in India is the palm leaf; either of the Talipat (*Corypha umbraculifera*), or of the Palmyra (*Borassus flabelliformis*). But the former appears to be a recent introduction from Ceylon into S. India, and it is there by no means common even on the West Coast, and is hardly known elsewhere. The palmyra also appears to have been introduced from Ceylon or Tinnevelly into the rest of the Peninsula; it is by no means common out of the South¹. The materials mentioned at an earlier date (excluding lotus leaves and such fancies of poets) almost preclude the existence of MSS. of books or long documents. The 'bhūrjapatra' which is understood (apparently on philological grounds—I cannot find out what tree furnishes this singular tissue) to mean the bark of the birch-tree, could not have been available everywhere in large quantities, nor would it be very suitable². The supposition of those who with Whitney and Böhtlingk assert that writing was, in India, long used only *esoterically* for composition and the preservation of texts, while the instruction was entirely oral, is, on these grounds almost certainly correct.