129 
1900.] A. F. R. Hoernle — Epigraphical Note on Palm-leaf, etc. 
early as the middle of the 5th century, is fashioned exactly like the 
typical Indian Corypha palm-leaf manuscript. It consists of separate 
leaves, provided with a string-hole, and these leaves measure from 2 to 
2| inches in width, which is the width of the Corypha leaf. But 
further, all the oldest paper manuscripts from Kuchar imitate the 
Indian Corypha leaf manuscripts, as may be seen from the specimens 
of the Weber MSS. and the Macartney MSS. which I have published. 
They all consist of separate, elongated oblong leaves, from 2| to 2| 
inches wide, with a string-hole, and with the writing running parallel 
with the longer side of the leaf. Everything points to the inscribed 
Corypha leaf as the model, not even to a Borassus leaf. The Bower 
MS. and those Weber and Macartney MSS. which are written in Indian 
Gupta characters must have been written by native Indians migrated 
to Kuchar, while the other Weber and Macartney MSS. written in the 
Central Asian modification of the Indian Gupta were probably written 
by native Kucharis.^^ Why should the people of Northern India and 
of Central Asia have gone to the trouble of cutting up birch-bark and 
paper into the shape of palm-leaves, when both kinds of material 
more naturally lent themselves to other (square) forms, which for 
writing purposes one would have thought to be obviously more con- 
venient than the long narrow strips of palm-leaf ? What else could have 
caused this, but the sanction of immemorial usage among the literary 
classes of India, the learned and the “religious,” those who occupied 
themselves with the composing and copying of books ; and with the 
spread of Indian culture, through the Buddhist propaganda, its fashions 
of writing went with it beyond the borders of India. At the same 
time the circumstance that they imitated the oblong shape of the 
palm-leaf rather than the squarish shape of the birch-bark leaf clearly 
points to the conclusion that the writers of the manuscripts in question 
either came from Western India, or, at least, were influenced by the 
literary customs prevailing in that part of India — the part which is 
included in Alberuni’s Southern India.^^ 
This suggests another thought. The Corypha palm is a South 
Indian tree. Its leaves established that immemorial and so strongly 
23 See my paper in the Journal, A.S.B., Vol. LXVI, pp. 257, 258. 
This view is confirmed by the circumstance that the leaves of some of the 
Weber and Macartney MSS. are numbered on their obverses. This, as the late 
Professor Bfihler has pointed out (see Vienna Oriental Journal, Yol. YII, p. 261), 
is a custom of Southern India. In Northern India the numbering is on the reverses. 
We thus seem here to come across a curious indication regarding the particular 
part of India from which the Buddhist propaganda proceeded to Eastern Tnrkistan. 
We should have to look for it in South-western India. 
