PAPER-MAKING IN CHINA. 383 
as we have been informed by an intelligent visitor to that 
country. It is the cheapest of materials in daily use, and the 
manufacturers are very numerous. They make it of Rice 
straw, of young Bamboos, of different fibres, and of the bark of 
the Paper Mulberry. Showing that the inventors of the art 
make use chiefly of unwoven fibres, though they also employ 
refuse cloth and silk, &c. 
So India, though hardly ever mentioned in histories of the art, 
is a country where considerable quantities of paper are made, 
though not generally of a good quality ; their thick ink does not 
so much require this. There are small manufactories of it in most 
parts of the country, and to a considerable extent at such places 
as Ahmedabad, Lucnow, &c. As we have seen in the fore- 
going pages, a great variety of fibres, such as Jute, Sunn, 
Ambaree, Moorva, and old sacks and fishing nets are also 
employed, though in general the natives prefer the Sunn fibre. 
The Himalayan process with the inner bark of the Paper plant 
very much resembles that of the Chinese with the Paper Mul- 
berry. It is probable therefore that the art was introduced 
from that country into the Himalayas, and not from India. Into 
which it was probably carried at a very early period, and from 
thence learnt by the Arabs; who would hardly else have 
used Cotton, an Indian product. The Hindoos themselves, 
as Tam informed by Professor Wilson, still used, about the be- 
ginning of the Christian era, or as late as the age of the Dramas, 
the inner bark of the Bhurja or Birch (Betula Bhojputtur) 
for writing on. In Southern regions the leaves of the Palmira 
and of the Talipat are well known to have been long used, as 
they still are, for writing on with a style. But the manufacture 
of paper from pulp has long been established in India, and 
before the Arabs began to make translations from the Sanscrit, 
at the same time that they did so from Greek writers. 
Dr. Buchanan, in his survey of the lower provinces of the 
Bengal Presidency, has given an account of the manufacture of 
paper from Pat or Jute (Corchorus olitorius) at Dinagepore, and 
in Behar, &c., from Sunn (Crotalaria juncea). Itis also so made 
in other parts of the country, as well as from Hibiscus fibre. And 
there can be no difficulty in doing so with the numerous fibrous 
materials which India produces in such vast variety, and which 
we have already mentioned in so much detail. 
