A History of Agriculture in India v2.c59.s13.3

v2.c59.s13.3

The greatest contribution of the Sultanate to Indian culture was paper. Indians used *bhojapatra* or birch-bark and slips of palm leaves for writing and painting. In the thirteenth century Moslems introduced paper from Central Asia. They had learnt the technique of paper-making from some Chinese whom they had captured in Samarkand. In the fourteenth century paper came into use in India for writing and painting. Jain paintings of the fourteenth century are on paper, but the oblong format of palm-leaf manuscripts persists. Indirectly the Moslems also stimulated the development of Jain painting. Construction of temples was forbidden and as such the rich Jain merchants as an act of merit employed artists who painted their religious texts, the *kalpasutaras*, which were concealed in underground libraries.