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| 0419 |
Ancient Khotan : vol.1 |
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well its original black colour, as shown by Plates XCI–XCIII, and makes the writing clearly
legible even in those cases where the leather itself has become discoloured or stained ⁶.
I regret not to have found an opportunity of arranging for a chemical examination of this Ink used in
ancient ink. But, judging from its appearance, it seems probable that it was Chinese (or Indian) documents.
ink, such as that of which a small stick was actually found by me among the rubbish layer
inside the Endere Fort (see Plate CV). The ink used on the tablets, both Kharoṣṭhī and
Chinese, varies considerably in quality and thickness (comp. e.g. tablets N. xv. 24, Plate IC,
and N. xv. 71, Plate C), but I did not observe any indication pointing to a difference in the
composition of the ink.
The documents just described, quite apart from their contents, have a special interest as Leather as
the first specimens yet discovered of leather used for early records in an Indian language. What writing
literary evidence exists as to the use of leather for writing purposes in ancient India is extremely material.
scanty and vague ⁷. Religious objections, based on the ritual impurity of animal substance,
might easily be supposed to have militated against it. Yet here we have incontrovertible evidence
that, whatever those objections may have been in theory, they had no more weight in practice
with the Buddhists of the Khotan region than with the orthodox Brahmans of Kashmir, who
probably from a very early period and down to our own time have been accustomed to use leather
bindings for their Sanskrit codices ⁸. 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 the same kind (see N. xv. 319. a), unmistakably shreds left after the cutting of full-sized sheets,
and subsequently swept out of the office room, turned up among the rubbish. They show that
the official residing in the ruined dwelling not only received communications on leather but also
issued such. Nevertheless the relatively small number of such documents, as compared with the
abundance of wooden tablets of all kinds, proves beyond all doubt that wood was by far the
more prevalent writing material. Leather offered the manifest advantages of being light and
easy to dispose of, besides permitting the writer to cut his sheets according to his requirements
at the time. But wood was probably far cheaper, and the stationery made of it lent itself more
readily to effective fastening. Whatever the reasons for this unquestionable preference may have
been, it is certain that wooden tablets could not have been manufactured in loco, for no chippings
or other remains of wooden stationery in the rough turned up in the rubbish-heap.
Nothing proves better the great diversity as well as the general good preservation of the Wedge-
Kharoṣṭhī documents on wood yielded up by N. xv. than the relative ease with which they shaped
enabled me definitely to ascertain all technicalities connected with the use of their various Kharoṣṭhī
classes. The wedge-shaped tablets, of which I had already recovered so many from N. i., were tablets.
here even more numerous, six complete pairs in practically perfect preservation being found,
besides forty-five covering- and thirty-four under-tablets. Their average dimensions agree closely
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724
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