Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s2: B. Letters

Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s2

Language: English

B. Letters

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For this purpose, bhūrja bark, palm-leaves, plates of metal, and (in later times) paper were mostly used. Of Hindu letters we now have apparently no specimens of more than one hundred years old, except perhaps among the Mahrāṭhas. Allusions to letters are frequent in the dramas and the earlier of the modern artificial poems, and some of such allusions go back at least 1200 years³.

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³ *e. g.* Vāsavadattā (ed. by Dr. F. E. Hall) p. 163—Sā ca kṛitapraṇāmā Makarandāya patrikām upānayat.

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There is also a “letter-writer” attributed to a Vararuci, one of a Vikramāditya’s “nine jewels” of course⁴; it is a small treatise, but shows that some attention was paid to the subject, and that, therefore, letters were in common use: it, however, refers to letters on paper or the like, whereas in S. India and Ceylon (except among foreigners) palm-leaves have always been used for this purpose up to recent times. For this purpose a strip of palm-leaf is cut in the usual form, and smeared with turmeric or some similar colour for ornament. The ends are split a little way to secure the whole which is folded in a ring, and then fastened by a thread. The earliest complete description of such a letter that I know of is of the middle of the 16th century in De Barros’ “Asia”; he says: “As outras cousas, que servē ao modo de nossas cartas mesiuas e escriptura comum, basta ser a folha escripta e enrolada em si e por chancella atase com qualquer linha, ou neruo da mesma palma”¹). The writing of letters is also often mentioned in the curious Tuḷu Sagas which refer to the Bhūta worship of Canara and the Koṅkan. Thus in the Saga of Kōṭi and Cannayya, after a clerk has been sent for on a certain occasion he is ordered to write a letter. “Another man was sent . . . to bring leaves of a young palm-tree. He had the leaves exposed to the morning sun, and taken up in the evening. By this time the clerk had come. . . He asked the Ballāḷ (chief) why he had been sent for. The Ballāḷ said: I want you now to write a letter. The clerk sat down on a three-legged stool. The Ballāḷ had the bundle of palm-leaves placed before him; he (the clerk) took out a leaf from the bundle, cut off both ends and laid aside the middle. He had oil and turmeric rubbed on it, and asked the chief what he should write”²).

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⁴ “Notices”, i., pp. 196-7. There is much in this tract that appears to be derived from Muhammadan custom, and not to be of Hindu origin.

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¹ “Asia”, Decada i.; Livro ix.; Cap. iii. (vol. i.; *folio* 180 *b*. of the second ed. 1628). The letter from the Zamorin to the king of Portugal which Vasco de Gama carried in 1498 was on an ōlai (Castanheda “Historia da India”, i. p. 81, ed. of 1833).

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² From a MS. collection of the Sagas (in Tuḷu) relating to the Bhūta worship which I had made for me during a residence of two years and a half in S. Canara.

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Strange as it may seem, letters were also written on substances which would seem totally unfit for this purpose. One of the Açoka inscriptions on a block of stone seems to be a letter from the king to the convocation of Buddhist priests³).

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³ Burnouf, “Le Lotus de la bonne Loi”, pp. 727-8. “Elle (l’inscription) est écrite, et très-soigneusement, sur un bloc détaché de granit qui n’est ni d’un volume ni d’un poids considérable, n’ayant que deux pieds Anglais sur deux de ses dimensions, et un pied et demi sur la troisième. Ce bloc . . . . peut être aisément transporté . . . . C’est une lettre.”

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Thin plates of metal were also used in the South, and several letters of this kind are mentioned by the early Portuguese writers. A letter on a plate of gold was sent by the king of Vijayanagara in 1514 to the Portuguese chief⁴). Other instances are mentioned, and the practice was evidently a common one, but specimens (for obvious reasons) do not seem to be in existence.

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⁴ Correa, “Lendas da India”, ii., part 1, p. 377.

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Hiouen Thsang⁵) mentions a letter which Tishyaraxitā (Açoka’s second wife) forged. It appears to have been sealed with red wax (!), and Açoka (it is said) used for a seal the impression of his own teeth. The substance, however, on which it was written is not mentioned, probably bhūrja bark was intended.

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⁵ “Pèlerins Bouddhistes”, ii., p. 156.

Linked texts (1)

Vāsavadattā — Subandhu, Sanskrit