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Indian Epigraphy c9.t2: 2. Birch and Aloe Bark

Indian Epigraphy c9.t2

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2. Birch and Aloe Bark

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Sanskrit bhūrja-patra (literally, ‘the birch leaf’) is in reality a sheet of the required size cut out of the inner bark of the Bhūrja or birch tree grown in the Himalayas. In the 11th century, Al-Bīrūnī said, “In Central and Northern India, people use the bark of the tūz tree, one kind of which is used as a cover for bows. It is called *bhūrja*. They take a piece one yard long and as broad as the outstretched fingers of the hand, or somewhat less, and prepare it in various ways. They oil and polish it so as to make it hard and smooth, and then they write on it.........Their letters and whatever else they have to write they write on the bark of the *tūz* tree.”¹

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¹ Sachau, *Alberuni’s India*, Part I, p. 171.

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Q. Curtius seems to refer to the Indian practice of writing on birch bark when he says that, at the time of Alexander’s invasion, the Indians used the tender bark of tree for writing.² A synonym of *bhūrja* is *lekhana*, i.e. ‘writing’ or ‘a written document’, while it is also recognised in the sense of other words meaning ‘a written document’. The use of birch bark is supposed to have started in the north-west, although copper plates of the central, eastern and western regions of India, cut to the shape of birch-bark sheets, suggests the spread of the custom in early times. In North India, letters were generally written on birch-bark sheets.

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² Bühler, *Indian Palaeography*, p. 6.

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As in the palmyra-leaf manuscripts, the sheets in the manuscripts written on birch bark also had a hole or two for a string or two to pass through. Generally, space was left, while writing on the sheets in ink, for the perforation to be made afterwards. Some Kashmiri manuscripts written on birch-bark sheets during the Mughal age were bound with leather like the contemporary Arabic and Persian manuscripts. The introduction of cheap paper led to the disappearance of birch bark as a writing material, though it is still used in some areas for writing spells for insertion in talismans.

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Among the earliest birch-bark manuscript so far discovered, we may count the Khotan copy of the Prakrit *Dhammapada* written in Kharoṣṭhī characters of about the 2nd or 3rd century A.D., the manuscripts of the Sanskrit Buddhist work *Saṃyuktāgamasūtra* copied about the 4th century A.D., the Bower manuscripts (the sheets of which have a hole in the midd e for a string to pass through) and the Bakhshali manuscript of a mathematical work copied about the 8th century A.D.¹ But the majority of birch-bark manuscripts are of the 15th and later centuries.

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¹ For some manuscripts dating from the 6th century, cf. N. Dutt, Gilgit Manuscripts, Vol. I, Intr.

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The originals of many of the royal charters and other records later copied on copper plates or stone were apparently written on birch-bark sheets.

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The inner bark of the Aguru or Aloe tree (*Aquilaria agallocha*), called Sāci in Assam, was the most popular material for writing manuscripts in the north-eastern corner of India.² The sheets of this bark, made specially ready for writing, were called Sāci-pāt (literally, ‘the Sāci leaf’) in Assamese. A large number of manuscripts written on this material have been discovered in Assam and some of them have found their way to the libraries and museums of the Western countries.³ A manuscript of the Sundarakāṇḍa of the Rāmāyaṇa, written on aloe-bark sheets in the Bengali-Maithili-Assamese characters of about the 15th century, is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. It is believed that some of the bark sheets of the manuscript contain a layer of wood with them.⁴

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² See JASB, 1894, p. 109.

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³ Journ. As., 1958, pp. 85 ff.

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⁴ Cf. ibid., Plate IX, p. 86.

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