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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
IRANO-SINICA—PAPER MONEY, PARCHMENT 563
of ancient papers, has included the fibre of Morus alba and M. nigra among the materials to which his researches extended.
Mulberry-bark paper is ascribed to Bengal in the Si yan `ao knit
tien lu N M %° by Hwain Sin-ts`en. '", published in 1520.1
Such paper is still made in Corea also, and is thicker and more solid than that of China.' The bark of a species of mulberry is utilized by the Shan for the same purpose.'
As the mulberry-tree is eagerly cultivated in Persia in connection with the silk-industry, it is possible also that the Persian paper in the bank-notes of the Mongols was a product of the mulberry.' At any rate, good Marco Polo is cleared, and his veracity and exactness have been established again.
Before the introduction of rag-paper the Persians availed themselves of parchment as writing-material. It is supposed by Herzfeld that Darius Hystaspes introduced the use of leather into the royal archives, but this interpretation has been contested.' A fragment of Ctesias preserved by Diodorus6 mentions the employment of parchment (&4O pa) in the royal archives of Persia. The practice seems to be of Semitic, probably Syrian, origin. In the business life of the Romans, parchment (membrana) superseded wooden tablets in the first century A.D.' The Avesta and Zend written on prepared cow-skins with gold ink is mentioned in the Artâ,i-virâf-nâmak (I, 7). The Iranian word post ("skin") resulted in Sanskrit pusta or pustaka ("volume, book "),8 from which Tibetan po-ti is derived.' On the other hand, the Persians have borrowed from the Greek 8cçi9Épa ("skin, parchment ") their word daftar or defter ("book," Arabic daftar, diftar), which likewise
belongs to the oldest cultivated plants of the Chinese (see above, p. 293), and that hemp paper is already listed among the papers invented by Tsai Lun in A.D. 105 (cf. CHAVANNES, Les Livres chinois avant l'invention du papier, Journal asiatique, 1905, p. 6 of the reprint).
1 Ch. B., p. Io b (ed. of Pie hia irai ts`un Su).
2 C. DALLET, Histoire de l'église de Corée, Vol. I, p. CLXXXIII.
G. SCOTT and J. P. HARDIMAN, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, pt. I, Vol. II, p. 411.
a The Persian word for the mulberry, tics, is supposed to be a loan-word from Aramaic (HORN, Grundriss iran. Phil., Vol. I, pt. 2, p. 6) ; but this is erroneous (see below, p. 582).
6 Cf. V. GARDTHAUSEN, Buchwesen im Altertum, p. 91. 6 II, 32.
DZIATZKO, Ausgewählte Kapitel des antiken Buchwesens, p. 131.
8 R. GAUTHIOT in Mémoires Soc. de Linguistique, Vol. XIX, 1915, p. 130.
9 T`oung Pao, 1916, p. 452.
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