Comments on: Teachers, Students, and Notes

By: Dab

Dab — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:27:10 +0000

Thank you so much Vasu Deva, I guess you are a wealth god, meaning at least one with a wealth of knowledge if not actual wealth wealth, which makes your name a fitting one. I feel more enlightened now, but of course that may not be so hard to accomplish when the darkness of my ignorance is what you’ve got to work with.

Your
Dab

By: somadeva vasudeva

somadeva vasudeva — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:37:06 +0000

It is actually quite easy to produce curves with the iron styluses they use, I did some experimentation but the bizarre method of holding the stylus hindered my progress. What is also puzzling is the use of kuṭila/vartula/bhujiṃmol scripts in Nepal, where cursive top serifs were used although reed pens were also used. I cannot actually remember ever seeing “scratched” early Nepalese MSS, but perhaps they have some at the NGMCP. Otherwise, if Dani’s theory is correct, we would have to assume that this writing style was adapted from elsewhere. But it seems plausible to me that the development of cursive styles is motivated by the need to prevent splitting palm-leaves along the grain with horizontal top serifs.

By: earlytibet

earlytibet — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:34:02 +0000

Writing by scratching seems to encourage one to write in short, straight lines as much as possible, so the early Roman cursive is not rounded (the characteristics I think of when I say ‘cursive’) but made up of short disconnected strokes. On the other hand, Indic writing styles are full of curved strokes. Is this due to the particular nature of the styluses and palm leaves used in India?

P.S. I was once shown a computer program that electronically ‘inked’ digital images of uninked palm-leaf manuscripts.

By: somadeva

somadeva — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:26:05 +0000

PS: to clarify: “it became impossible to have horizontal top serifs”. This is because a long succession of horizontal scratches at the same level would have split the palm leaf.

Somadeva Vasdeva

By: somadeva

somadeva — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:25:24 +0000

PS: to carify: “it became impossible to have horizontal top serifs”. This is because a long succession of horizontal scratches at the same level would have split the palm leaf.

Somadeva Vasdeva

By: somadeva

somadeva — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:23:25 +0000

In South India scratching seems to have been the norm. Ahmed Hassan Dani has a longish discussion on how this choice of writing implement influenced the development of the regional post-Gupta era scripts. Since palm-leaves were “scratched” in Southern India it became impossible to have horizontal top serifs (śirorekhā), hence the development of more cursive styles than in Northern India where reed pens were used.

The term kalama is the preferred term used by medieval Kashmirians (see Kṣemendra’s Narmamālā), I am not sure what the most common term in Nepal was. I think there are quite a lot of terms relating to scribes, writing, and bureaucracy in general that are alleged to have Sassanid origins, divira “scribe” from di-bīr etc.

The inking is done secondarily, and apparently needs to be repeated occasionally. If you ever visit the IFP/EFEO libary in Pondicherry (or a similarly well maintained MS library) one can still see this happen.There is also a fragrant oil that smells strongly of lemongrass that is used as an insecticide (or against mold) that is regularly painted on. It also seems to keep the palmleaves supple and smooth. In fact, I have wondered if it may be detrimental to them to just dump them in a controlled environment and forget about them as is done in most large libraries today.

Without inking it can be very difficult to read MSS. Another thing, of the two types of palmleaf currently used in SOuth India, the shorter variety is of poorer quality and it’s use is allegedly a recent innovation. I forget the botanical names now and ma not in my office to check, I remember somebody mentioning that the shorter palmleaf producing trees are not indigenous plants, but 16th cent (??? no idea about the date anymore) imports.

Somadeva Vasdeva

By: Dab

Dab — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:49:47 +0000

P.S. Isn’t lekhana the old and truly Sanskrit word? And doesn’t it come from a root that means ‘to scratch’? So isn’t it true that to scribe is to scrape? And isn’t the inking optional, or at least secondary? Sorry, so many questions.

Your
Dab

By: Dab

Dab — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:38:23 +0000

Dear S.D.,

You’re some deva (sorry, a slip of the pen). But didn’t writing on palmleaf require a stylus of some harder substance than reeds? Don’t the letters have to be incised and only afterward filled up with ink by rubbing? Does kalama also mean stylus? And is kalama with the meaning of ‘reed, pen’ really an old word? Doesn’t it come through Persian from Arabic/Greek or something? Just asking.

Your,
Dab

By: somadeva

somadeva — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:59:05 +0000

Kalama, reed-pens. In Nepal on palm leafs in Kashmir on birchbark.

By: earlytibet

earlytibet — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:59:11 +0000

Yes, that does seem like a similar case.

Generally I think we can say that accomplished scribes will adopt an already-existing cursive hand, and use accepted abbreviations, as well as sometimes making up their own. Some kind of cursive handwriting probably always develops shortly after the spread of the technology allows it — pen and ink being perhaps the best tools for fast, cursive writing. In the case of Tibetan, I would argue that the ‘headed’ (dbu can) style began to develop into the ‘headless’ (dbu med) style once writing with pen and ink became widespread. (By the way, what are the writing tools of Nevari and Kashmiri scribes you mention?)

The semi-educated writers, on the other hand, will only have the basic letter forms, which in this case are the ‘headed’ letters, and when they attempt to write them fast, without the cursive forms in their repetoire, the results are quite different from the attractive tachygraphic writing of the better educated scribes.