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$ 37, B &C.]
INDIAN PALEOGRAPHY.
93
by rubbing them with oil and polishing them. The art of the preparation has however been lost in Kashmir, when the introduction of paper during the Moghal period furnished a more convenient material. But a not inconsiderable number of old birch-bark MSS. still exist in the libraries of the Kashmir Pandits. According to a statement made to me by BHĀ DĀJI, birch-bark MSS. occur also in Orissa, and amulets, written on Bhurja, are still used throghout all the Aryan districts of India. The use of the bhurjapattra of course began in the north-west ; but it seems to have spread in early times, as the copper-plates of Central, Eastern and Western India appear to have been cut according to the size of the Bhurja, which in Kashmir mostly corresponds to our quarto (BURNELL). As stated in many classical Sanskrit works and by Berūpi, all letters were written on Bhurja at least in Northern, Central, Eastern and Western India.
The oldest documents on Bhūrja, which have been fonnd, are the Kharosthi Dhammapada from Khotan, and the inscribed "twists," tied up with threads, which MASSON discovered in the Stūpas of Afghanistan (see above, page 18, and note 6). Next come the fragments from the Godfrey Collection and the Bower MS., the leaves of which have been cut according to the size of palm-leaves, and, like these, are pierced in the middle in order to pas. a string through, intended to hold them together. Next in age is the Bakhshāli MS., and then follow after a considerable interval the birch-bark MSS. from Kashmir in the libraries of Poona, London, Oxford, Vienna, Berlin, &c., none of which probably date earlier than the 15th century.
B. - Cotton cloth. The use of well-beaten cotton cloth is mentioned by Nearchos (see above, page 6), aud some metrical Smộtis, as well as some inscriptions of the Andhra period, state that official and private documents were written on pata, patika or kārpāsika pata. According to BURNELL, and Rice (Mysore and Coorg Gazetteer, 1877, 1, 408), the Kanarese traders still use for their books of business a kind of cloth, called kadatan, which is covered with a paste of tamarindseed and afterwards blackened with charcoal. The letters are written with chalk or steatite pencils, and the writing is white or black. In the Brhajjñanakopa at Jesaimir, I found a silk hand with the list of the Jains Sūtras, written with ink. Recently PETERSON (Fifth Report, 113) has discovered at Anhilväd Pāțan a MS., dated Vikrama-Samvat 1418 (A. D. 1361-62), which is written on cloth.
c. - Wooden boards. The passage of the Vinayapitaka (see above, page 5), which forbids "the incising" of precepts for religious suicide, bears witness to a very early use of wooden boards or bamboo chips as writing materials. Equally, the Jätakas, and also later works, mention the writing board, used in the elementary schools. Chips of bamboo (salakü), with the name of the bearers, served as passports for Buddhist monks (BURNOUF, Introd, à l'histoire du Bouddhisme. 259, note). An inscription from the time of the Western Kşatrapa Nabapāna" speaks of boards (phalaka) in the guildhall, on which agreements regarding loans were placarded, and Kātyāyana prescribes that plaints are to be entered on boards with pandulekha, i.e., with chalk. Dandin narrates, in the Dasakamāracarita, that Apahāravarman wrote his declaration, addressed to the sleeping princess, on a varnished board.7 MSS. on varnished boards, which are common in Burma, have hitherto not been discovered in India proper; but there are indications that the Hindas, too, used boards for literary purposes. WINTERNITZ informs me that the Bodleian
1 Kashmir Report, J.BBRAS. 12, App., 29 f. · RAJENDRALAL MITRA, Gough's Papers, 17: Kashmir Report, 29, note 2.
J.ABB. 66, 225 ff.; facsimiles in HOERNLE's Bower MS.; WZKM. 5, 104. .J. JOLLY, Recht und Sitto, Grundriss, II, 8, 114; Nāsik insoription No. 11, A, B, iu B.ABRWI 4, 101 f. 5 Nisik inscription No. 7, line 4, in B.ASRWI. 4, 102. 6 BESIP 87, note 2.
Disakumaracarita, Uoobvāla 2, towards the end
