Fibres. 



301 



[October, 1900. 



and s titter by being coated over with a 

 paste made from the boiled kernel of 

 tamarind seed. It is coloured yellow 

 on one side, probably with turmeric. 

 Thus prepared the paper becomes very 

 hard and looks almost like a piece of 

 hide. But the use of the paste from 

 tamarind seed makes the paper unfit for 

 the transcription of sacred texts. As 

 we shall see later on, in Bengal, and 

 perhaps, elsewhere in India, a solution 

 of starch made by boiling sanned rice is 

 used for sizing paper. This operation is 

 called 'tulat.' Paper which was subject- 

 ed to this process was avoided by the 

 old pundits for writing their ' pothis.' 



Excepting in the case of correspond- 

 ence with the outside world the Nepal 

 Government never uses any machine- 

 made foreign paper. 



The Daphne paper, though commonly 

 known as Nepal paper, is really mostly 

 made in Bhutan, But the Bhutias also 

 use the bark of another plant locally 

 known as ' Diah ' for paper making. The 

 process followed is just the same as in 

 China and Japan. 



Paper-making is a dying industry in 

 the province. Only a generation ago it 

 was still in a flourishing condition. 

 Within this short period it has com- 

 pletely disappeared from many districts. 

 At present the industry, such as it is, 

 exists only in three districts in Bengal : in 

 Hooghly, Howrah and Murshidabad. In 

 in Howrah the industry is confined to a 

 single village named Mainah three miles 

 from Amta Railway Station in the 

 Uluberia subdivision. In Murshidabad 

 it is confined to two villages named 

 Kristopur and Srirampur, in thana 

 Samserganj in the Jangipur Subdivision. 

 In the Hooghly district it is made at 

 Manad and Gossainmalpara in the Polba 

 police-station, at Neala in the Pandua 

 police-station, at Shahbazar and other 

 villages in the Dhaniakhali police-station 

 and at Bali Dewanganj in the Arambagh 

 Subdivision. 



It is in the hands of a class of Maho- 

 medans known as Kagjis or paper- 

 makers. The sight of a kagji village is 

 most melancholy. So far as the paper 

 industry goes the crude hand tools in 

 use in this country have apparently no 

 chance whatever against machinery. 

 At Mainah near Amta in the Uluberia 

 Subdivision, Howrah district, out of 100 

 families that carried on the industry 

 30 or 35 years ago, only half-a-dozen 

 families still desperately stick to their 

 old profession, the rest having either 

 turned cultivators or labourers or 

 having left the village. The Kagji 

 villages in the Hooghly district are, if 

 possible, only in a worse plight, having 

 been devastated by malaria in addition 



to the havoc caused by the competition 

 of machine-made paper. Paper-making 

 used to be carried on at Nasriganj in the 

 Shahabad district, but the industry 

 ceased to exist some years ago. The 

 Collector of Cuttack reports that about 

 30 years ago a small paper-making 

 industry was carried on by some Maho- 

 medans of Harihaipur. There are still 

 seven men who can make paper, but the 

 industry is dead. The paper was made 

 from straw, and though rough and 

 coarse was formerly used in the Collec- 

 torate Record-room for fly-leaves, but 

 its use has been discontinued for some 

 years. 



At Shahbazar near Tarkeswar (district 

 Hooghly) in place of 70'dhenkis' (as 

 the mortar-and-pestle arrangement for 

 producing the pulp is called) only two 

 are still in use. The large pieces of 

 stone that once served as mortars for the 

 ' dhenkis ' lie scattered about, sometimes 

 serving only as steps for their houses. 

 The people sorrowfully point to the large 

 tanks their forefathers had excavated 

 from the profits of paper, and which 

 have now become silted up containing 

 only a little dirty water. 



The only material now used by the 

 Kagjis of Hooghly and Howrah for 

 making paper is waste or refuse paper. 

 Book-binder's shavings are a particularly 

 valued material. Formerly old sacking 

 and fishing nets were also used for the 

 manufacture of brown paper, but it has 

 ceased to pay and is no longer used. In 

 the Jangipur subdivision, Murshidabad 

 district, however, jute cuttings are still 

 used for making a kind of brown paper. 



But if the essence of the art of paper- 

 making be, as already mentioned, the 

 minute subdivision of the raw fibrous 

 material with a view to obtaining the 

 pulp the small industry as still carried 

 on in the province hardly deserves to be 

 called paper-making at all. It is a mere 

 recasting of the old material like the 

 producion of glassware from broken 

 glass. 



The paper produced is a kind of coarse 

 stuff used by Indian merchants and 

 zamindars for keeping their business 

 accounts. The paper is almost exclusively 

 used, for instance, in the office of the 

 Maharajadhiraj of Burdwan. It is also 

 used by astrologers for writing people's 

 horoscopes, for though coarse, it is 

 believed to resist the ravages of insects 

 and climate better than machine-made 

 paper. Towards the close of the Bengali 

 year, when new account books are pre- 

 pared for the coming year, this paper is 

 a good deal in request. After this during 

 the rest of the year the demand is 

 small. 



