PAPER 



POPPY SEED MATERIALS 



trade in puppy seed (though an unimportant one relatively) u the fact 



that India IMPORTS this seed. The supply comes mainly from Persia, but 



(luring the five years 1901-6 has steadily declined from 3,868 ">l-2 



to 151 cwt. in 1905-6, nearly the whole quantity being taken by Bombay. 



In I'M ); 7 tin -re was a slight increase on the previous year to 195 cwt. 



The EXPORTS are very considerable : In 1900-1 they were 802,186 cwt., 



valued at Rs. 68,65,266 ; in 1904-5 they had expanded to 1,362,599 cwt., 



valued at Rs. 78,43,018 ; though in 1906-7 they declined to 802,615 < 



valued at Rs. 66,77,231. The price seems to fluctuate very greatly, for 



\vhih- the quantity exported in 1902-3 was only 966,220 cwt., it realised 



Rs. 82,45,096. These exports go very largely to France, Belgium and Ooontriw to 



.my. only a very insignificant quantity to Great Britain. During ' 

 1906-7, out of the total indicated, the following were the shares taken : 

 France, 387,252 cwt. ; Belgium, 326,038 cwt . ; < i,-, many, 88,260 cwt. ; and 

 the United Kingdom, 2 cwt. ; all other countries the balance of the total. 

 The shares supplied by the chief exporting provinces were Bombay, 

 526,262 cwt., and Bengal, 276,348 cwt. No figures are available for the 

 exports of poppy-oil. The cake is chiefly employed as manure (see p. 771). 



PAPER AND PAPER MATERIALS. The word PAPER is D.E.P., 



derived from papyrus, the name of the Egyptian reed which afforded v *- P*- * 



the material chiefly used to write upon in the classic times of Europe. On 



this subject Prof. E. Rapson of Cambridge writes me " There is no pa P er< 



ancient paper (in our sense of the word) in Egypt. When people speak 



of Egyptian paper they mean papyrus." 



In other parts of the world various substances have similarly been em- substitute*, 

 ployed as paper substitutes ; for example, in classic India and Central Asia, 

 more especially with the Sanskrit people, the birch-bark (bhujpattra) was, 

 and to this day is still used for most of the purposes of paper (see p. 131). 

 But in the moist climate of the plains of India, birch manuscripts would 

 of necessity be very perishable, hence as a rule they are hardly more than 

 300 years old. As they exist they are copies of copies of copies. In 

 Chinese Turkestan, however, manuscripts of the 3rd or 4th centuries Ancient 

 A.D. have been found. On the plains of India, and from fairly ancient * 

 times, the leaves of certain palms have been employed for writing on. 

 The oldest of all known Indian manuscripts are the palm-leaves found 

 in Nepal, which belong to the 9th century A.D. The leaves most 

 largely used are those of Cori/jt/ift mnln-<t<-it/ift'rft (ola, see p. 429) and 

 Borastitts flahcffifcr (see p. 170). While being written upon, the 

 specially prepared strips of leaf are held in the left hand and the 

 words scratched on the surface with a sharp style, the scratchings 

 being sometimes loaded with pigment. In Assam the aboriginal tribes 

 have for several centuries past used the inner bark of .l</ui/<tria 

 A<i<ill<>< Int (see p. 73) as a natural writing material, a substance that 

 not inaptly compares with the thin boards of beech-wood (the material 

 upon which the Teutons first wrote, and from which have come the words 

 bece, boc, buche, book). It has been said that the ancient history of China 

 was written on finely prepared strips of bamboo, and that these were 

 destroyed during one of the dynastic wars. It is often, in fact, affirmed 

 that bamboo as a writing material is even more ancient than the papyrus. 



History. Stein (Ancient Khotan, 1907, 345) furnishes much interesting informs- KhoUn 

 tion regarding the official documents, letters, etc., found by him during his excava- Dtooowtaa. 



861 



