The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s7.134

c10.s7.134

One would expect to find in the Greek period a brisk trade in the export of parchment to India, for since in the early second century Eumenes II of Pergamum had started its manufacture on a great scale in his slave factories it had become the common writing material of Asia west of India, and at the end of that century Chang-k’ien or his lieutenants had noted its regular use throughout the Parthian empire (p. 281); it may have been the knowledge they brought back to China that there were better things to write upon than silk and split bamboo which ultimately led in A.D. 105 to Ts’ai Lun’s great invention—paper. But the only actual indication of parchment which I have found in India is the Greek letter written on that material to Augustus from Barygaza (p. 321), and that is not enough to argue from. The Greeks in India must however have had *some* writing material—their words for pen, ink, and book passed into Sanscrit (p. 376)—and it is not likely to have been anything else.