778 ON THE ALPHABETS OF THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
the polite language. The process is not the ingenious one of Chi¬ 
na, India, Persia and Europe, but greatly resembles that of making 
the Egyptian papyrus, and still more closely the preparation of the 
South-Sea cloth, the raw material being, indeed, exactly the same. 
The true bark, cut in slips, is long macerated and beaten, and after 
being thus treated, slips of it are joined to each other over a smooth 
surface, and defects made good by patching. The fabrick thus ob¬ 
tained is of a brownish grey colour, unequal in its texture, rigid, 
but strong. 
With the exception of the Javanese, it does not seem that the na¬ 
tives of the Archipelago ever wrote with ink, before they were in¬ 
structed by the Arabs, no doubt from the absence of paper. The 
Javanese have a native name for “ pen” and “ink,” su'a and mahsi, 
but with the other nations, the only ones are Arabic,—’Mlam and 
dawat, often indeed greatly disfigured, as in the example of the Bu- 
gis who convert them into kalah and dawak. The pen generally 
used is not reed as on the continent of Asia or a quill as in Europe, 
but a stub obtained from the Aren palm, Saguerus saccharifera. 
Even paper is generally known to the Indian islanders by the 
Arabian name of kartas, so that it is probable that a true paper was 
imported long before the arrival of Europeans, although the natives 
were never taught the art of preparing it. At present European 
paper is in general use by all the more civilized nations, to the ex¬ 
clusion of Asiatic. 
