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CHAPTER II.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BOWER MANUSCRIPT.
The term "Bower Manuscript" is not strictly correct. As will be seen from the sequel, the object in question is not really a single manuscript, but, in point of size, rather a combination of two manuscripts, a larger and a smaller. The larger manuscript itself, moreover, in point of subject matter, is a complex of six smaller manuscripts, the distinction of which from one another is indicated also by their separate pagination. The Bower Manuscript, therefore, in reality is a collection of seven distinct manuscripts, or it may be called a collective manuscript of seven parts. The latter is the terminology adopted in the present edition; that is, Parts I-III, IV, V and VII, constitute the larger manuscript. while the smaller manuscript consists of Part VI.
The external form of the collective Bower Manuscript is that of the Indian pôthi 13 A pâthi consists of a number of leaves, of a practically uniform oblong shape, generally enclosed between two wooden boards, and the whole held in position, or "bound, by a string which passes through a hole drilled through the whole pile. Unfortunately no photograph was ever taken of the Bower Manuscript in the condition in which it was found, or in which it was made over by the finder to Lieutenant Bower. But an idea of its appearance may be formed from Fig. 6, which shows a paper pôthi, tied up with a string between its wooden boards, exactly as it was found by Professor Grünwedel's expedition in a cave temple of the Mingoï of Qizil. 44 In Fig. 7, the same pôthi is shown untied and unfolded.
The leaves of the Bower Manuscript are cut from the bark, or periderm, of the birch tree; those of a modern Indian pôthî are, as a rule, of paper.45 Before the introduction of paper into India, which event probably coincided with the advent of the Muhammadans, the writing material for the purpose of literature was palm-leaf or birch-bark.46 Palm-leaf must have been the original material of an Indian pộthê; for it was the shape of the palm-leaf which determined the narrow oblong shape of the leaves of the pôthi. The bark of the birch tree may be obtained in very large strips, about a yard long and eight inches broad. There is no apparent reason why these stripe should have been cut into narrow oblong pieces in order to be used as the writing material of books. On the other hand, from the long narrow segments of the leaf of a palm tree none but strips, at most about a yard long and three inches broad, could be cut. These, if used as writing material, necessarily determined the narrow oblong shape of the leaves of the pôthi. The birch tree (Betula utilis), the "Himalayan Birch," is indigenous in the extreme North of India (eg., in Kashmir), while the palm tree (Talipat, Corypha umbraculifera) is peculiar to the South of India. Hence the fashion of the Indian pôthi must have originated in the South of
From the Sanskrit pustaka, or rather pustika, book, applied at the present day to any book, written or lithographed or printed, Indian or European
4 See Sketch Map to Chapter I. • Occasionally they are still made of palm-leaf, in Bihar, Orissa, and Southern India.
46 On the local distribution, and other particulars, of these two materials, see my Epigraphical Note, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LXIX (1900), Part I, pp. 93 r.
