Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s1: A. Books

Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s1

Language: English

A. Books

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**1.** ***Bhūrja-bark*** appears to have been first used in India for this purpose, but only in the North¹. It is mentioned in the Amarakosha, and incidentally, in the Raghuvamça and similar poems².

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² Q. Curtius (viii., 9) mentions that at the time of Alexander's invasion the Indians wrote on bark, but others mention only cotton cloth or paper.

The earliest real description of its use that I have met with is by Albirūni (about 1030 A. D.) who writes: “Dans les provinces du centre et du nord de l'Inde, on emploie l'écorce intérieure d'un arbe appelé *touz*. C'est avec l'écorce d'un arbre du même genre qu'on recouvre les arcs; celle-ci se nomme *bhoudj*. Cette écorce a une coudée de long, et elle a en largeur la longueur du doigt, ou un peu moins. Pour la rendre plus propre à faire du papier, on l'oint d'huile et on la polit; par là, on lui donne de la force et on la rend lisse. Ensuite, quand on veut fixer l'ordre des feuillets, on les pagine; puis on enveloppe le tout dans une étoffe, et on le place entre deux planches de la grandeur des feuillets. Des livres portent dans l'Inde le nom de *pouthi*. C'est sur la même écorce que les Indiens écrivent leurs lettres et qu'ils marquent tout ce qu'ils ont besoin de communiquer au loin”³. This bark is written on with the aid of a reed pen and ink of a kind which will be mentioned afterwards⁴. MSS. on this substance are unknown in S. India.

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³ Reinaud, ‘Mémoire’, pp. 305-6.

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⁴ The latest and most complete description of this material and the way it is used is to be found in the *Bombay Journal*, vol. xii. pp. 29 ffg.

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**2.** ***Palm-leaves*** of the *Borassus flabelliformis*, *Corypha umbraculifera* and *C. taliera*. These have always been, and still are, the chief material for books not only in S. India, Ceylon, Indo-China, the Malay¹ Archipelago and Burmah², but even in Bengal and other parts of N. India.

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¹ A Chinese writer (15th century A. D.) notices this fact. See "Notes on the Malay Archipelago and Malacca" compiled from Chinese sources by W. P. Groeneveldt, p. 40. (Batavia, 1876.)

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² In Burmah the Corypha leaves are used for books only; the *Palmyra* for letters etc. Mason's "Burmah", p. 522.

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These leaves are used in two ways:

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*a)* The letters are scratched on them with a style, and the lines thus formed are afterwards made clear by being filled with some black matter—powdered charcoal or lamp-black—rubbed in with some juicy vegetable stalk such as that of the yam. This is the most general way of writing on these leaves.

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*b)* The leaves are written on with a pen, and both black and red ink. This way of writing seems peculiar to the N. of India and particularly to Cambay and Gujarat. I have met with some Jain MSS. written in this way in S. W. India, but they had been brought from the North.

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The use of palm-leaves, as material to write on, is certainly of considerable age in India, and from thence it spread to Ceylon and Indo-China³. This use was probably common from the period of the introduction of writing into Eastern and Southern India, but it is not possible to fix the exact date.

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³ The Palmyra (*Borassus*) seems to be indigenous in S. India or Ceylon. The Talipat seems to be indigenous in Ceylon only. The botanists appear not have considered the original home and diffusion of these useful palms.

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In the seventh century A. D. this material is repeatedly mentioned in the Life and Travels of Hiouen Thsang⁴. According to these authorities⁵ the collection of the three piṭaka made and circulated by Mahākāçyapa was written on tāla leaves, and at the time Hiouen Thsang visited India these leaves were in general use.

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⁴ "Pèlerins Bouddhistes", i. pp. 158 and 202; iii. p. 148.

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⁵ Fryer ("New Account", p. 33) and some others err in supposing that the leaves used for writing on are those of the cocoa-palm. In the Mahāvaṁso (ed. Turnour, p. 204) a fugitive king is said to have written a grant on a *Pandanus* leaf, as he could get nothing else.

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About 1030 A. D. Albīrūnī writes⁶: "Dans le midi de l'Inde, il y a un arbre qui ressemble au palmier et au cocotier; il produit un fruit bon à manger⁷, et des feuilles d'une coudée de long et de trois travers de doigt de large: on appelle ces feuilles *târy*⁸. C'est sur ces feuilles qu'on écrit; on pratique ensuite un trou au milieu, et l'on y fait passer une ficelle, qui retient les feuilles les unes contre les autres."

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⁶ Tr. by Reinaud, "Mémoire", p. 305.

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⁷ The palm referred to is for this reason the *Borassus flabelliformis*. Albīrūnī seems not to have known the *Corypha* or *Talipat*.

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⁸ *i. e. tāla.*

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The early European travellers in the East all mention palm-leaf books as being in general use in India⁹.

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⁹ See, *e. g.*, Barros, Decada, i., ix., 3 (f. 180 of vol. i. of the 2d. ed.).

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The oldest Indian mss. known at present are on palm-(talipat-)leaves, but with the writing in ink. One of these discovered by Profr. Bühler is *d. saṃv.* 1189 or A. D. 1132, and is the oldest Indian ms. known. It is a ms. of the Jain Āvaçyakasūtra[^1). About this there need be no doubt. The next which is dated 1151 or 1229 A. D. is so well preserved that it seems difficult to believe that it is not a copy of an older ms. with the date of the original left unchanged, as is often the case[^2). The oldest palm-leaf ms. that I know of the first class is of A. D. 1428 from which I have taken the alphabet in Pl. x. It is a Canarese ms.

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The meanness which is so characteristic of S. India, displays itself conspicuously in the mss. written there. It is very seldom that the least attempt is made (except in Malabar) to trim the leaves, and to provide proper covers for them. In Ceylon, Burmah and Indo-China, on the other hand, the palm-leaf mss. are always beautifully written, and are often real works of art. In S. India, mss. are hung up in the kitchen chimney; in the Ceylon monasteries I observed that each one of importance is preserved carefully in a box made for the purpose and to fit the ms.

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*3. Plates of Metal.* Books of this kind exist, though examples are very rare.

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The earliest mention of such occurs in the Life and Voyages of Hiouen Thsang. These state that Kanishka: “fit graver, sur des feuilles de cuivre rouge, les textes de ces Traités (Commentaries on the Tripiṭaka), les renferma dans une caisse en pierre soigneusement scellée et bâtit un *Stoûpa* pour l’y déposer”[^3). Such legends are not uncommon in all parts of India[^4), but instances of books written on plates of metal must always have been very uncommon, and it is only possible to refer to two or three examples at the present time.

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Some Telugu works written on copper plates existed some sixty years ago at Tripatty, and, perhaps, are still to be found. Campbell (in 1820) writes: “Having heard that a number of poems, engraved on some thousand sheets of copper, had been preserved by the pious care of a family of Brahmins in the temple on the sacred hill at Tripatty, I deputed a native for the purpose of examining them; but, with the exception of a

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[^1): “Report”, 1872-3. [^2): It belongs to the R. As. Society (No. 112 Sanskrit) and there is a splendid facsimile of a leaf in pl. i. of part i. of the Palæographic Society’s “Facsimiles of Ancient MSS. Oriental Series.” (1875.) [^3): “Pèlerins Bouddhistes” i., 96; ii., 178. A plate of silver with two words on it was found in the Manikyāla tope. Prinsep’s “Essays” by Thomas, i., p. 100 *note*, and pl. vi. [^4): A similar story is told about Sāyaṇa’s works (“Ṛigveda”, ed. Max Müller, vol. i., p. xvii.), but it rests on a ridiculous book (“Biographical Sketches of Dekkan Poets”, Calcutta, 1829—p. 45) which asserts: “Some of the author’s works were dug out of a pit, by the emissaries employed by the late Col. Mackenzie, to collect literary materials in the ceded districts in the year 1811. The characters in which these works were written, are mixed (! !) and obsolete.” This is pure invention!

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treatise on grammar, of which a copy was taken, the whole collection was found to contain nothing but voluminous hymns in praise of the deity"¹).

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¹ A. D. Campbell, "Telugu Grammar" (2nd. ed. of 1820), p. xiii.

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A small Pali MSS. of recent date written on silver plates is in the British Museum; it is from Ceylon.

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These are the only examples that I can refer to of books written on plates of metal.

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*4. Boards of wood etc.* In Burmah, Buddhist rituals are often written on slips of wood covered with gold or silver lacquer, the letters being black. Numerous examples of these splendid MSS. are to be seen in the British Museum and similar libraries in Europe. I have not met with the least trace of such in S. India, nor have I ever heard of any such practice in India.

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Some of the Indian law-books² mention a board as used by judges to reduce notes of pleadings into form; this must have been a kind of black board, but I have not seen anything of the kind in use. The Lalitavistara³ mentions sandalwood boards used in school like slates.

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² Kātyāyanasmṛiti (quoted by Mādhava): Pūrvapaxam svabhāvoktam prāḍvivāko ’bhilekhayet | Pāṇḍulekhena phalake, tataḥ pattram viçodhayet || This passage must be relatively modern. Writing is frequently mentioned in connection with judicial proceedings, but such a record as is here intended, can only have been used in modern times.

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³ See p. 121 of Profr. Foucaux's edition (Tibetan), Vol. ii.

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*5. Prepared cloth.* This is the earliest writing material in India so far as trustworthy historical information goes, for it is described by Nearchus⁴, who says that the Brahmans wrote: ἐν σινδόσι λίαν κεκροτημέναις. This is obviously the ‘paṭa’ or ‘kārpāsika paṭa’ of the Smṛitis and compilers of the Digests⁵, and must, therefore, have been in use down to comparatively recent times, but I have not met with a specimen of it, nor have I anywhere met with a description of this substance.

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⁴ "Reliqua Arriani et Scriptorum de rebus Alexandri", ed. Müller, p. 61.

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⁵ See below ch. vi.

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The form in which cloth is now used for writing on is of a different kind, it is that of ‘kaḍatam’ as it is termed in Canarese, and this is (so far as I am aware) used only by the Canarese of all the peoples of India, though the Siamese have precisely the same, and the Bataks of Sumatra use a kind of cloth which is folded in the same way though it differs from the Canarese and Siamese material in being light-coloured.

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The Canarese cover the cotton cloth with a paste made of mucilage (from tamarind or similar seeds) mixed with powdered charcoal, and when dry it is folded transversely, and written on with a steatite pencil or chalk, so that the letters are white on a black ground¹). Books of this kind are now seldom used except for merchants' accounts, and I have not met with any old specimens. The earliest reference² to this kind of books, is of about 1250 A. D.

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¹ See also my “Vaṃçabrāhmaṇa”, p. xxxvii.

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² Mr. Kittel has kindly given me this information.

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*6. Paper.* The use of paper in India seems to be subsequent to the 11th century A. D., but, up to quite recent times it was unknown in S. India, and is, even now, regarded by rigid Hindus as unclean. In all the dialects of India it is called by more or less corrupt forms of the name ‘kāgad’ by which it was known to the Arabs³, and its foreign origin is, thus, apparent.

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³ On p. 10 I termed kāgad an Arabic word, but it is not one *originally*. What its real origin is, I cannot find.

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According to Albīrūnī⁴ (and there is no reason to doubt his accuracy) paper was discovered by the Chinese at Samarcand, when Transoxiana was under their power, or in the earlier centuries A. D., and from Samarcand the manufacture gradually extended to other countries.

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⁴ Reinaud, ‘Mémoire’, p. 305. See also von Kremer's “Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalifen,” ii. pp. 306 ffg.

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The earliest Indian MS. on paper that has, as yet, been discovered is of 1310 A. D.⁵, but there are many others in existence of anything like this age, and most of the MSS. in existence are subsequent to 1500 A. D. The miserably destructive climate of India is quite sufficient to account for this seemingly strange circumstance.

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⁵ “Notices”, x. p. iii. (Report).

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The paper used in the South of India during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries came chiefly from Portugal, though, latterly, some was imported from China. English paper was but little used. The water-mark affords an easy means of detecting forgeries.

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Perhaps the first *exact* historical mention of books in India is that by the Chinese which records the importation of Buddhist books from India into China in 73 A. D. At the beginning of the 5th century A. D. we have Fa-hian's testimony that books were then rare, and he also tells us that he had to copy for himself what he wanted⁶. But two hundred and fifty years after this there was not so much difficulty; copyists were then to be found⁷ and Hiouen Thsang appears to have had little difficulty in collecting a considerable library. With the Buddhists and Jains it has always been esteemed a virtuous act to have sacred books copied in as elegant a way as possible, and to present them to monasteries⁸ or learned men, but though this practice is also mentioned by Hindus (*e. g.* Hemādri), the Brahmans do not seem to have taken to the notion, and their ᴍss. can at once be recognized by their miserable appearance. This is, no doubt, to be attributed to the peculiar reliance of the Brahmans on oral instruction only, in consequence of which books were rather endured as a necessity than held in esteem. This point of view is singularly displayed in Sanskrit literature; allusions to books are so rare that it would at first sight seem as if they were hardly in use even down to recent times, and it is remarkable that the works in which such allusions occur were all composed in N. India or Cashmere¹. The descriptions that one finds of the style and way of writing books which occur in some of the later Tantras and similar works all refer to N. India and Bengal, and not to S. India².

Linked texts (13)

Kathāsaritsāgara — Somadeva Bhaṭṭa, Sanskrit
Nandipurāṇa — Sanskrit
Kātyāyanasmṛti — Kātyāyana (smṛtikāra), Sanskrit
Tibetan translation ('Chi med mdzod) — Classical Tibetan
Vaṃśabrāhmaṇa — Sanskrit
Raghuvaṃśa — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit
Mahāvaṃsa — Pāli
Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit
Āvassaya — Ardhamāgadhī Prakrit
Bṛhatkathā
Hemādri
Mânikyâla
Dānakhaṇḍa — Hemādri, Sanskrit