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96
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1877.
as it floats on the water, shake the water and curable everywhere in the same region. I cannot pulp smartly with your right hand, and the learn by whom or when the valuable properties pulp will readily diffuse itself in a uniform of the paper plant were discovered; but the manner over the bottom of the frame. When Nipalese say that any one of their books now exit is thus properly diffused, raise the frame out istent which is made of palmyra leaves may be of the water, easing off the water in such & safely pronounced on that account to be five manner that the uniformity of the pulp spread hundred years old, whence we may perhaps infer shall continue after the frame is clear of the that the paper manufacture was founded about water, and the paper is made.
that time. I conjecture that the art of paper"To dry it the frame is set endwise near a making was got by the Cis-Himalayan Bhotiâs large fire, and so soon as it is dry the sheet is viá Lhassa from China, & paper of the very peeled off the bottom of the frame and folded same sort being manufactured at Lhassa, and up. When, (which is seldom the case) it is most of the useful arts of these regions having deemed necessary to smooth and polish the sur- flowed upon them, through Tibet, from China, face of the paper, the dry sheets are laid upon and not from Hindustan. wooden boards and rubbed with the convex "P.S." (abridged.) “Dr. Wallich has fully entire side of the conch-shell, or, in case of the described Asiatic Researches, vol. XIII. p. 387) sheets of paper being large, with the flat surface the paper-plant. The raw produce or pulp (beat of a large rubber of hard smooth-grained wood; up into bricks) has been sent to England, and no sort of size is ever needed or applied to pre- declared upon competent authority to be of vent the ink from running. It would probably unrivalled excellence for the manufacture of that surprise the papermakers of England to hear sort of paper upon which proof engravings that the Kachar Bhotiâs can make up this paper are taken off.” into fine smooth sheets of seven yards square. I subjoin the botanical description of the
“This paper may be purchased (in 1831) at paper-producing plant, with a few remarks for Katmandu, in almost any quantity, at the price the reader who may not be a botanist. of seventeen annas rikká per dhárni of three sers, As far as my own experience goes, this plant and the bricks of dried pulp may be had at the is but small, being a shrub of generally three to same place for from eight to ten annas sikká perfour feet; although, I am told, it often grows dharni. Though called Nipalese, the paper is higher. The thickness of the stem is not gennot in fact made in Nipal Proper. It is mand- erally greater than one's finger, and it would factured exclusively in Cis-Himalayan Bhdt, and bear cutting down every year; although of by the race of Bhotiâs denominated in their course by this process, in such a cold climate own tongue) Rangbo, in contradistinction to the as that in which it grows, -at 5000 to 9000 feet Trans-Himalayan Bhotiâs, whose vernacular above the sea-level, -it should properly be left name is Sokpo. ...... To return to our paper- some two or three years to grow up again. making-most of the Cis-Himalayan Bhotiâs east Even without maceration in water the inner as of the Kali river make the Nipålese paper ; but well as the outer bark is easily separated from the greatest part of it is manufactured in the the wood. For tying purposes, both inner and tract above Nipal Proper, and the best market outer bark are nsed at the same time. for it is afforded by the Nipalese people, and The leaves are small and glabrons, being hence probably it derived its name; a great somewhat glossy; and the flower is insignificant, quantity is annually made and exported south- but with a slightly pleasant odour. The berries, wards to Nipal and Hindustan, and northwards which come on the tree in April to June, are to Sakya-Gumba, Digarchi, and other places showy, red, and very aorid. It will grow where in Transmontane Bhôt. The manufactories are there is very little soil, ----preferring, however, like mere sheds, established in the midst of the im- most planta, leaf-mould caused by the decomposimense forests of Cis-Himalayan Bhôt, which tion of the fallen oak-leaves, and has a stout afford to the paper-makers an inexhaustible hold by its fibrous roots in the rocks below. supply, on the very spot, of the firewood and As I have never visited Nipal and the forests ashes which they consume so largely : abandance spoken of by Mr. Hodgson, I have never seen of clear water (another requisite) is likewise pro- l it growing in great profusion, but it is scattered
