124 A. F. R. 'S.oerwle—E'pigra'pliiml Note on Palm-leaf^ etc. [~No. 2, 
would be interesting to know them, and they would be worth investiga- 
tion. Perhaps it may be found that the Borassus palm was intioduced 
into India only at a comparatively recent period, and being a more 
useful tree than the Corypha, it was more frequently cultivated, and 
more extensively employed. Of the Borassus palm almost everything 
can be used : its fruits and buds are edible, its juice is made into liquor, 
its leaves can be used for domestic and literary purposes, its trunks are 
shaped into boats ; and so forth. Of the Corypha palm neither the 
fruit is edible nor the juice potable. Being a far more useful tree, the 
Borassus would naturally soon become a greater favorite even with 
respect to such a matter as the leaves for writing purposes in whicli it 
is perhaps hardly superior to the Corypha. But if is difficult to suppose 
that the employment of the Borassus leaves as a material for writing 
can be separated by any long interval from the introduction of the 
Borassus palm into India. The tree could not well have existed long in 
India without its useful properties being discovered. If the use of its 
leaves for writing grew up in the 1 5th or 16th centuries, its introduction 
can hardly be placed much earlier than tne I4th century. 
There is a notice in Hiuen Tsiang’s Travels (Beal, vol. ii, p. 255) of 
the existence of “ a forest of Tala trees ” near Konkanapura in South- 
India. The exact site of that place is still ' a matter of dispute ( see 
Indian Antiquary, XII, p. JI5, XXIII, p. 28) ; but it must be somewhere 
in the Concan, which is the limit to which the Coryplia umbr. grows 
freely in cultivation (though not wild). The pointed notice of the 
“ forest of Tali pat palms ” is curious. It must have been a particular 
feature of that place, and must have been shown to Hiuen Tsiang as 
such. In the forest there was a Stupa ; and Hiuen Tsiang adds that 
“ in all the countries of India the leaves of the Talipat palm are every- 
where used for writing on.” Here we seem to have a clear instance of 
a plantation of Corypha palms, on a large scale, for the purpose of 
growing leaves for inland use or for export. Writing was mainly 
carried on in Buddhist and other monasteries, and probably there were 
Corypha plantations connected with most of the larger monastic 
establishments in South India ; only the Konkanapura plantation would 
seem to have been one on a particularlylarge scale. 
There is a puzzling notice in Alberuni (Sachau, vol. i, p, I7I). 
He says : “ The Hindus have in the South of their country a slender 
tree like the date and cocoanut palms, bearing edible fruits, and leaves 
of the length of one yard, and as broad as three fingers, one put beside 
the other. They call these leaves tart, and write on them. They bind a 
book of these leaves together by a cord on wluch they are arranged, 
the cord going through all the leaves by a hole in the middle of each.” 
