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Among the written material discovered in the caves were manuscripts of many different types written on birch bark, wood, silk, leather and dyed papers to give just a few examples. The manuscripts themselves also took different forms.
Paper was invented in China around the 1st century BC. Cheaper than silk and lighter than wood, it soon replaced both as the main writing material. Different fibres were used to make paper including hemp and bark from the paper mulberry. Several panels were glued together to form a scroll. The end was attached to and wrapped around a finely finished thin wooden roller. The right end was strengthened with a thin wooden stave to which a coloured silk tie was attached which held the scroll secure. This first example (1) is a typical 8th century scroll.
The scroll form was not exclusive to China on the Eastern Silk Road. The earliest extant Buddhist manuscripts date from the 1st century AD and are from Gandhara (present-day Pakistan). They are written on birch bark – a readily available material there — and rolled into scrolls. A margin was sewn about 0.5-1 cm in from the edge to strengthen the edges on rolling. Several sheets of birch bark were overlapped and glued together to form a longer scroll (2).
Finely woven silk was used as a writing material in China from early times. It was light and could be made into long sheets. It was usually dyed yellow, the Chinese imperial colour and this tradition was continued by the Buddhists on the Silk Road for their paper scrolls. They used dye made from the bark of the Amur cork tree which also imparted insecticidal and water-repellant properties. Silk continued to be used after paper was invented but only rarely and for special manuscripts as it was expensive. Even after paper was invented other material continued to be used for Silk Road manuscripts. In the 3rd and 4th-century kingdom of Kroraina leather stationery was reserved for royal communiqués. The third image (3) is a letter from the king in the capital of Kroraina to a local governor of Niya.
The earliest Chinese writing is found on oracle bones dating from the second millennium BC and bronze inscriptions of the late second and first millennium BC. But by around 500 BC silk and wood were both used as writing media. Silk however was expensive and a system was developed whereby long thin woodslips were bound together by string so that one group was the same size as a standard piece of silk. Woodslips were often used to record sales and provide proof of purchase for items traded on the Silk Road.
Wood was a convenient material for military tallies, hill-station slips and other ephemeral documents for military administration. Where there is water — above or underground — there are thriving woods among the desert sands, consisting mainly of poplar. But the fact that Stein's finds included many woodslips which had been recycled into everyday objects suggests that supplies of wood were limited — or at least reserved for the documents and other military needs. In the fourth image (4) we see woodslips fashioned into a spatula and knife, the bottom object with a rounded burned end is possibly 8th-century toilet paper!
The term folio refers to an individual sheet or leaf of paper. This can be loose or can form part of a bound book or set of loose pages. Individually the sheet, if double sided, would constitute two pages. Folded the sheet would make up four pages. The term comes from the Latin 'folium' or leaf.
This folio of the popular Lotus Sutra (5) is written in Sanskrit in an early form of South Turkestan Brahmi script. The manuscript originally comprised more than 350 folios, each consisting of two thin layers of paper pasted together.
The pothi form originated in India where palm leaves were used as a convenient writing material. The long, thin shape of the leaves dictated the format and size of the material which was often bound together through holes in the centre of the folios. These size restrictions were overcome when the format was reproduced in China and Tibet where paper replaced the traditional palm leaves. Despite no longer being restricted by the limitations of the material the pothi format was retained and we see many examples of large paper pothi in the collections worldwide.
The sixth image (6) is a Tibetan pothi. Because Tibetans had access to paper from China they were able to make much larger pothi than those found in India.
Manuscripts which are bound in a traditional book format are often referred to as 'codex'. This format gradually replaced the scroll and in turn was replaced itself by the printed book. In practical terms the codex was an improvement over the scroll in several ways. It could be opened flat at any page, allowing easier reading; the pages could be written on both recto and verso; and the codex, protected within its durable covers, was more compact and easier to transport.
At Dunhuang, open to Indian, Tibetan and Chinese influences, curious hybrids of the book form emerge. The manuscript shown here (7 & 8) contains a sutra in Tibetan (in red ink) written in its usual orientation: horizontally left to right. If the concertina is oriented to read the Tibetan it resembles a pothi and there is even a string hole (although there is no need for string since the leaves are already joined. The Chinese is a commentary to the sutra. When the book is turned to read this text, top to bottom, right to left, it is simply a folded scroll.
See if you can find other examples of these types of manuscript on the Silk Road Exhibition pages on the IDP website.
What do you think these different types of document would have been used for?
What can they tell us about technological developments on the Silk Road?
How do you think these techniques of making manuscripts would have been passed on?
Stories about the secret of silk production and the development of different forms of manuscript can be found on IDP's bookbinding page and in this article by the Silk Road Foundation.
Why do you think silk making was such an important secret?
How did paper production change communication?
What is the equivalent means of communication today?