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Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books
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| 0427 |
Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 |
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with certainty the introductory formula previously seen less clearly
on many of the wedge-shaped tablets : Mahamuara maharaya
lihati, "His Highness the Maharaja orders in writing." There
could be no further doubt that these were official documents. Most
of them, I could see, were dated, but only by month and day, while
the single lines on the otherwise blank reverses were manifestly
addresses. In them I thought I could recognise two personal
names or titles appearing again and again. But who were the
recipients of these and so many other documents, the adminis-
trative officers or simply the clerks of this ancient settle-
ment?
Quite apart from their contents, these documents have a special
interest as the first specimens as yet discovered of leather used
for writing purposes among a population of Indian language and
culture. Whatever the religious objections may have been, it is
evident that in practice they had no more weight with the pious
Buddhists of this region than with the orthodox Brahmans of
Kashmir, who for centuries back have used leather bindings for
their cherished Sanskrit codices. The finish given to the leather
of those ancient documents indicates extensive practice in the
preparation of the material. Small pieces of blank leather of
this kind, unmistakably shreds left after the cutting of full-sized
sheets and subsequently swept out of the office room, turned up
plentifully among the rubbish. The discovery of an ancient pen
made of tamarisk wood (see p. 366), in the same refuse heap,
helps us still better to realise the conditions of clerical work in
that period. The bone knob of the pen had probably served as a
burnisher.
But interesting as these details were, they could not compare in
importance with the information yielded by the far more numerous
finds of Kharoshthi tablets. Many of those unearthed from N. xv.
were in excellent preservation and retained intact the original clay
seals and strings with which they were fastened. There could be
no doubt as to wood having been the general writing material, and
it was hence particularly fortunate that I was thus enabled defi-
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542
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552
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563
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573
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582
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