INDIAN KNOWLE1 



PAPER 



Hitory 



Indian 

 Know- 

 ledge. 



...,. ;.<i. \\hili- loe.iiu made paper is sometimes spoken of as procured from other 



in, I:-, -IK. us plants, sm-h as a Species of ItrmttnnHnttt. 



l/-i '1 In- mati-rial of the Bower, Macartney and Godfrey Manuscript* wm* Bhm Ppr. 



foiiml !-. \\ h i.' i / ''/,/.-</". Akad. Wist. Witn. Math. -Nat., 1 902, Ixxii., 1-5O) 

 isually a mixture, .f fibres in which * (ramie) and r. 

 i mulberry) were the chief. These M88.. beinu most pn 



it. wore not likely tn have boon written in China, while the presence of 

 ramie fibres in their fahru ati,>n precludes all idea of having been made in 

 Khotan or anywhere in Hast Turkeatan. 



Wiesner, reviewing th.- information to hand regarding the paper-mulberry Bamboo Shoota 

 tree, says that m Japan tin- til-re ha* been used for the manufacture of paper 

 :he iith century of our era, hut earlier still in Chum. The Chinese use 

 the young shoots of the I >.im !>,>,> in paper-making. [Cf. Karabacek, Da* Arabi*che 

 Papier, 2!i.| 1'rof. (Jil.-s (in a letter to Wiesner) remarks : "The earliest 

 paper (in China) was made from t<>w. old linen, fuhing-neta, etc. Modern paper 

 le from bamboo libre, the bark of the .iis- ...,./. jMtpyH/<rn and rice 

 straw. I can find no record of different papers at different periods. It is ex- 

 prennly stated that in Smi'ch'uan hemp was used for making paper, in Pukhien 

 I.amhoo, in the north mulberry bark, in Kiangtm rattan, on the sea coast lichen. 

 ;n Cliahkian.t,' husk of rain, in Central China >ilk and m tlupeh Bro > + 

 ,,,i,,,/, ,i<,,,. riil,- tho Pen tsoa kang tnu.'or Materia Medico." The M->. i. 

 -. \ered by Stein at Klmtan thus prove that paper manufacture was very 

 possibly known and practised in Persia, Central Asia, Tibet and China many 

 centuries before the art was known in Europe. 



There is no very certain knowledge when the art of paper-making came to 

 India. It is not mentioned by any trustworthy writer until the 14th or 15th 

 century. Recently it has been affirmed in the Indian public press that paper- 

 making was practised at Sialkot 620 years ago. Marco Polo, towards the close 

 of the 13th century, was one of the earliest authors who made known the fact 

 that the Chinese issued paper money, the paper being prepared from the bark 

 of the mulberry. [Cf. Travels (ed. Yule), i., 378.] Kublai Khan had paper- 

 money made in Pokin about 1260 A.D., and thus about the time when paper, 

 as we now understand it, was first made known in Europe. Polo, therefore, 

 expresses no astonishment at the material paper, but simply at the fact of its 

 being accepted in place of gold and silver. John Ray (Hist. PL, 1688, ii., 1302) 

 mentions that the art of paper-making was introduced into Germany from Galicia 

 in 1470 A.D., and he gives a description which is interesting from the fact of ita 

 being supposed to have been new and instructive at the time when penned. 



Nicolo Conti, who visited India in the early part of the 15th century, say*, Cunbsj. 

 " The inhabitants of Cambay alone use paper ; all other Indians write on leaves 

 of trees, of which they make very beautiful books. But they do not write as we, 

 or the Jews do, from left to right or right to left, but perpendicularly, carrying 

 the line from the top to the bottom of the page " (Winter Jones, transl. ; also in 

 ed. Hakl. Soc., 1857, 31). A little later Abd-er-Razzak, Ambassador from 

 Shah Rukh, visited India in 1442 A.D., and, like Nicolo Conti, went to Bidjanagar 

 (Vijaianagar), the capital then, as he says, of the mightiest kingdom on earth. 

 To-day that great city is a vast ruin, no part of it inhabited, and palaces and 

 public* buildings that were in process of erection are left as if the stone-workers 

 had but gone for their midday meal. 



" The writing of this people, says Abd-er-Razzak, is of two kinds : in one 

 they write their letters with a kalam of iron upon a leaf of the Indian nut (the 

 cocoa-nut tree)." " These characters have no colour and the writing lasts but 

 a short time. In the second kind of writing they blacken a white surface ; they 

 then take a soft stone, which they cut like a kalam and which they use to form 

 the letters ; this stone leaves on the black surface a white colour, which lasts a 

 very long time, and this kind of writing is held in high estimation." 



It is customary to read that paper-making was introduced into Hindustan 

 from Kashmir in the 16th century about the time of the Emperor Akbar. Law- 

 rence ( Valley of Kashmir, 379) tells us that Kashmir was once famous for its KMlunir Ppr. 

 paper, which was in much request in India. It was made from rags and hemp 

 fibre sized with rice-water. He then adds that it is believed the art was intro- 

 duced from Samarkand. It is often said the Arabs learned the art on the capture Armb Knowtsdg*. 

 of that city and thence in due time carried it to Spain. So also Gibbon mentions 

 that the knowledge of paper-making from linen raps was diffused from Samar- 

 kand, and Cassire is of opinion that it reached Mecca in the year 710 A.D. It is, 



863 



Vijaianagar. 



