522 ORIENTAL ELEMENTS OF CULTURE IN THE OCCIDENT. 



brush of I'iit'.s hair, which the Chinese .still use instead of the pen) is 

 connected through Mong-T'^ien (died 209 B. C.)" with the appearance 

 of a softer writing material which, according to Chinese accounts 

 found in Hirth, was, even in pre-Christian time, made from silk scraps. 

 About 100 A. D. Ts ai Lun, the director of the imperial manufactor}^ 

 of arms, made his immortal invention. Finding silk too expensive and 

 })and)()o unhand}', he devised a new writing material and manufac- 

 tured paper out of bark, hemp, rags, and tish nets. It is well known 

 that paper can })e obtained from various plant fibers by freeing them 

 from foreign su))stances, vigorously stirring when in a moist condition 

 and drying in thin layers. The older processes show a similarity to the 

 manufacture of felt, except that felt is made from raw animal mate- 

 rials while the paper industry uses vegetable fiber. As felt manu- 

 facture was particularly at home among the East-Turkish nomads, it 

 may be supposed that the suggestion for the preparation of paper 

 came from them to China, the more so as we first of all hear of raw 

 animal materials (silk scraps). The most important source on Ts'ai 

 Lun is his biography in the annals of the later Han, which treats of 

 the period of 25-220 A. D. The great importance of the new inven- 

 tion was already recognized in his lifetime, and succeeding years did 

 not forget his merit. In 105 A. D. Ts'ai Lun was officially praised 

 by a cabinet order, and his house and the stone on which he stamped 

 his paper were for many centuries considered as celebrated sights. 



To the Vienna orientalist, Hammer-Purgstall, belongs the merit of 

 having first brouglit to light from Islamic sources the important 

 account of the spread of Chinese paper by way of Samarkand to the 

 West;'' the precise date was established by Karabacek.^ The most 

 important source, Tha'tilibrs Lataif al-ma'arif,'' relates of the paper 

 industry of Samarkand, which superseded papyrus and parchment, 

 that it was transplanted thither by Chinese prisoners of war, captured 

 by Zivad, son of Salih. There is a parallel account in Qa/wnifs 

 Athar al-bilad.'' Karabacek^s somewhat free translation seems to me 

 to have nuich obscured the meaning of the ittakhadha. 1 should ren- 

 der the ([notation from Qazwini: "The author of Kingdoms and 

 Traveling-routes relates that prisoners of war from China were trans- 

 planted to Samarkand, among Avhom were some who understood the 

 manufacture of paper and choose it,-' etc. The refercMice here is evi- 



« I am indebted for this precise date to Professor Hirth, of Munich, wIidui 1 cou- 

 .snUi'd in some cases about the transcril)ing of Chinese nanu's. 



'' Z('its(thr. der Deutscheu niorgenl. (iesellsch., vol. viii, 1S54, p. r>29. 



''Comp. for th(^ following Karabacek, Das aral)is(lu' Tapicr, reprint from the 

 se(!ond and third volumes of the Mittheilungcii aiis der Sanimlung der Papyrus 

 Erzherzog Rainer, Vienna, 1887, and Neue Qucllcn zur Papyrusgeschiciitc hy tiie 

 same, reprint from the fourth volume of the Mitllieilun^en, Wien, 1888. 



'/ Edition of De Jong, p. 12(). 



'^Edition of Wiisti'ufeld, p. IM). 



