Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 470

THK STILUS
430
The island of Ceylon pro-
writing to a person of rank.
duces an enormous quantity of the smaller leaves, and they
are so cheap that a halfpenny's worth of them would be
sufficient for copying an entire folio volume.
Quintus Curtius relates that the Hindus, at the time of the
invasion of Alexander the Great, wrote with an iron stilus
on the soft and smooth bark of trees. It is quite probable
for
that palm leaves were mistaken for the bark of trees
nowhere in India can any evidence be found to prove that
the bark of trees has ever been used for the purpose of
;
writing.
Aeneas, in Virgil's epic, implores the Cumaean Sibyl not
to write her oracles on the leaves of trees, which the winds
might speedily disperse
:
Xe
Foliis tantum ne carmina manda,
turbata volcnt rapidis ludibria ventis.
commentators are of opinion that the reference here
It is therefore to be presumed that these
to palm leaves.
leaves were quite different from those now used in India,
which, on account of their weight and thickness, could not
be blown about by the wind.
The Hindus write with an iron stilus, or pencil, which is
from eight to nine inches long. The handle of the instru-
ment generally ends in a knife, which is used to trim the
In
sides of the leaves so as to make them all of one size.
writing with the stilus neither chair nor table is required.
The leaf is supported on the middle finger of the left hand,
and is kept steady by being held firmly between the thumb
and the forefinger. The stilus, in writing, does not glide
but the writer,
along the leaf, as does our pen on paper
after finishing a word or two, fixes the point of his instru-
ment on the last letter, and pushes the leaf from right to
This is executed
left till the line of writing is finished.
with such ease that it is by no means a rare sight to see
Hindus writing as they walk along.
As the characters thus traced are only a sort of faint
engraving, of the same colour as the leaf itself, and there-
fore not easily decipherable, it is the common practice to
besmear the whole with fresh cow-dung. The leaf is after-
wards wiped clean, but the new material fills up the engraved
All the
is
;