Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c8.s2.3

c8.s2.3

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).