1.
Classic of Poetry
–
It is one of the Five Classics traditionally said to have been compiled by Confucius, and has been studied and memorized by scholars in China and neighboring countries over two millennia. Since the Qing dynasty, its rhyme patterns have also analysed in the study of Old Chinese phonology. Early references refer to the anthology as the 300 Poems, with a typically inexact use of three hundred. The Odes first became known as a jīng, or a book, in the canonical sense. The same word shi later became a term for poetry. In English, lacking an exact equivalent for the Chinese, the translation of the word shi in this regard is generally as poem, song, before its elevation as a canonical classic, the Classic of Poetry was known as the Three Hundred Songs or the Songs. The Classic of Poetry contains the oldest chronologically authenticated Chinese poems, the majority of the Odes date to the Western Zhou period. A final section of 5 Eulogies of Shang purports to be songs of the Shang Dynasty as handed down by their descendents in the state of Song. According to the Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan, the latest material in the Shijing was the song Tree-stump Grove in the Odes of Chen, dated to the middle of the Spring and Autumn period. The content of the Poetry can be divided into two sections, the Airs of the States, and the eulogies and hymns. The Airs of the States are shorter lyrics in simple language that are generally ancient folk songs which record the voice of the common people. They often speak of love and courtship, longing for an absent lover, soldiers on campaign, farming and housework and they also include hymns used in sacrificial rites and songs used by the aristocracy in their sacrificial ceremonies or at banquets. Whatever the origin of the various Shijing poems as folk songs or not, in other words, they show an overall literary polish together with some general stylistic consistency. About 95% of lines in the Poetry are written in a four-syllable meter, lines tend to occur in syntactically related couplets, with occasional parallelism, and longer poems are generally divided into similarly structured stanzas. All but six of the Eulogies consist of a single stanza, almost all of the Airs, however, consist of three stanzas, with four-line stanzas being most common. Although a few rhyming couplets occur, the pattern in such four-line stanzas required a rhyme between the second and fourth lines. Often the first or third lines would rhyme with these, or with each other and this style later became known as the shi style for much of Chinese history. One of the characteristics of the poems in the Classic of Poetry is that they tend to possess elements of repetition and variation
2.
History of paper
–
Paper is a wood like material primarily used for writing, first invented in ancient China. Although contemporary precursors such as papyrus and amate existed in the Mediterranean world and pre-Columbian Americas, respectively, the first papermaking process was documented in China during the Eastern Han period, traditionally attributed to the court official Cai Lun. During the 8th century Chinese papermaking spread to the Islamic world, by the 11th century papermaking was brought to medieval Europe, where it was refined with the earliest known paper mills utilizing waterwheels. Later Western improvements to the process came in the 19th century with the invention of wood-based papers. The word paper is etymologically derived from papyrus, Ancient Greek for the Cyperus papyrus plant, papyrus however are plants pressed and dried, while paper is made from fibers whose properties have been changed by maceration or disintegration. In the pre-Columbian Americas, a type of bark paper known as amate was used as a folded writing material for codices. The earliest sample of amate was found at Huitzilapa near the Magdalena Municipality, Jalisco, Mexico, by the 16th century the Spanish introduced papermaking to the Americas. However, the earliest piece of found, at Fangmatan in Gansu province inscribed with a map. During the Shang and Zhou dynasties of ancient China, documents were written on bone or bamboo, making them very heavy, awkward. The light material of silk was used as a recording medium. The Han dynasty Chinese court official Cai Lun is widely regarded as the inventor of the method of papermaking from rags. It therefore would appear that Cai Luns contribution was to improve this skill systematically and scientifically, the record in the Twenty-Four Histories says In ancient times writings and inscriptions were generally made on tablets of bamboo or on pieces of silk called chih. But silk being costly and bamboos heavy they were not convenient to use, Tshai Lun then initiated the idea of making paper from the bark of trees, remnants of hemp, rags of cloth and fishing nets. He submitted the process to the emperor in the first year of Yuan-Hsing, from this time, paper has been in use everywhere and is universally called the paper of Marquis Tshai. The manufacture may have originated from the practice of pounding and stirring rags in water, after which the fibres were collected on a mat. The bark of Paper Mulberry was particularly valued and high quality paper was developed in the late Han period, in the Eastern Jin period, paper began to be made on a fine bamboo screen-mould, treated with insecticidal dye for permanence. After printing became popular in the Song dynasty the demand grew more, Paper was often used as a levy, with one prefecture sending some 1.5 million sheets of paper to the capital as tribute up to the year 1101. The first use of paper has been excavated in China dating to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han from the 2nd century BC and it was also used for safety, such as the padding of poisonous medicine as mentioned in the official history of the period
3.
Warring States period
–
The Warring States Period derives its name from the Record of the Warring States, a work compiled early in the Han dynasty. The political geography of the era was dominated by the Seven Warring States, namely, Qin, The State of Qin was in the far west, with its core in the Wei River Valley and Guanzhong. This geographical position offered protection from the states of the Central Plains, the Three Jins, Northeast of Qin, on the Shanxi plateau, were the three successor states of Jin. These were, Han, south, along the Yellow River, Zhao, the northernmost of the three. Qi, located in the east of China, centred on the Shandong Peninsula, described as east of Mount Tai, Chu, located in the south of China, with its core territory around the valleys of the Han River and, later, the Yangtze River. Yan, located in the northeast, centred on modern-day Beijing, late in the period Yan pushed northeast and began to occupy the Liaodong Peninsula Besides these seven major states, some minor states also survived into the period. Yue, On the southeast coast near Shanghai was the State of Yue, Sichuan, In the far southwest were the States of Ba and Shu. These were non-Zhou states that were conquered by Qin late in the period, in the Central Plains comprising much of modern-day Henan Province, many smaller city states survived as satellites of the larger states, though they were eventually to be absorbed as well. Zhongshan, Between the states of Zhao and Yan was the state of Zhongshan, the Spring and Autumn period was initiated by the eastward flight of the Zhou court. There is no one single incident or starting point for the Warring States era, some proposed starting points are as follows,481 BC, Proposed by Song-era historian Lü Zuqian, since it is the end of the Spring and Autumn Annals. 476–475 BC, The author, Sima Qian, of Records of the Grand Historian who chose the year of King Yuan of Zhou. 403 BC, The year when Han, Zhao and Wei were officially recognised as states by the Zhou court, author Sima Guang of Zizhi Tongjian tells us that the symbol of eroded Zhou authority should be taken as the start of the Warring States era. The Spring and Autumn period led to a few states gaining power at the expense of many others, during the Warring States period, many rulers claimed the Mandate of Heaven to justify their conquest of other states and spread their influence. Other major states also existed, such as Wu and Yue in the southeast, the last decades of the Spring and Autumn era were marked by increased stability, as the result of peace negotiations between Jin and Chu which established their respective spheres of influence. This situation ended with the partition of Jin, whereby the state was divided between the houses of Han, Zhao and Wei, and thus enabled the creation of the seven major warring states. This allowed other clans to gain fiefs and military authority, and decades of struggle led to the establishment of four major families. The Battle of Jinyang saw the allied Han, Zhao and Wei destroy the Zhi family, with this, they became the de facto rulers of most of Jins territory, though this situation would not be officially recognised until half a century later. The Jin division created a vacuum that enabled during the first 50 years expansion of Chu and Yue northward
4.
Shang dynasty
–
The Shang dynasty or Yin dynasty, according to traditional historiography, ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated them from c.1600 to 1046 BC, the Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty of traditional Chinese history supported by archaeological evidence. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone, the Anyang site has yielded the earliest known body of Chinese writing, mostly divinations inscribed on oracle bones – turtle shells, ox scapulae, or other bones. More than 20,000 were discovered in the scientific excavations during the 1920s and 1930s. The inscriptions provide critical insight into many topics from the politics, economy, many events concerning the Shang dynasty are mentioned in various Chinese classics, including the Book of Documents, the Mencius and the Zuo Zhuan. Working from all the documents, the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian assembled a sequential account of the Shang dynasty as part of his Records of the Grand Historian. His history describes some events in detail, while in other cases only the name of a king is given, a closely related, but slightly different, account is given by the Bamboo Annals. The Annals were interred in 296 BC, but the text has a complex history, the name Yīn is used by Sima Qian for the dynasty, and in the current text version of the Bamboo Annals for both the dynasty and its final capital. It has been a name for the Shang throughout history. Since the Records of Emperors and Kings by Huangfu Mi, it has often used specifically to describe the later half of the Shang dynasty. In Japan and Korea, the Shang are still referred to almost exclusively as the Yin dynasty, however it seems to have been a Zhou name for the earlier dynasty. The word does not appear in the bones, which refer to the state as Shāng. It also does not appear in securely-dated Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, xie is said to have helped Yu the Great to control the Great Flood and for his service to have been granted a place called Shang as a fief. Sima Qian relates that the dynasty itself was founded 13 generations later, when Xies descendant Tang overthrew the impious and cruel final Xia ruler in the Battle of Mingtiao. The Records recount events from the reigns of Tang, Tai Jia, Tai Wu, Pan Geng, Wu Ding, Wu Yi and the final king Di Xin. According to the Records, the Shang moved their capital five times, Di Xin, the last Shang king, is said to have committed suicide after his army was defeated by Wu of Zhou. Legends say that his army and his equipped slaves betrayed him by joining the Zhou rebels in the decisive Battle of Muye, according to the Yi Zhou Shu and Mencius the battle was very bloody
5.
Science and technology of the Han dynasty
–
There were great innovations in metallurgy. Smelting techniques were enhanced with inventions such as the waterwheel-powered bellows, the quality of life was improved with many Han inventions. The Han Chinese had hempen-bound bamboo scrolls to write on, yet by the 2nd century AD had invented the process which created a writing medium that was both cheap and easy to produce. The invention of the aided in the hauling of heavy loads. The maritime junk ship and stern-mounted steering rudder enabled the Chinese to venture out of waters of interior lakes and rivers. The invention of the reference for maps and raised-relief map allowed the Chinese to better navigate their terrain. In medicine, they used new herbal remedies to cure illnesses, calisthenics to keep physically fit, authorities in the capital were warned ahead of time of the direction of sudden earthquakes with the invention of the seismometer that was tripped by a vibration-sensitive pendulum device. To mark the passing of the seasons and special occasions, the Han Chinese used two variations of the calendar, which were established due to efforts in astronomy and mathematics. Hundreds of new roads and canals were built to transport, commerce, tax collection, communication. The Han-era Chinese also employed several types of bridges to cross waterways and deep gorges, such as bridges, arch bridges, simple suspension bridges. Han ruins of defensive city walls made of brick or rammed earth still stand today, if Mohism, rich in scientific thought, had rapidly grown and strengthened, the situation might have been very favorable to the development of a scientific structure. However, this did not happen because the seeds of the structure of science were never formed. During the late Eastern Han, disastrous upheavals again occurred in the process of social transformation, one can imagine the effect of this calamity on science. The most common writing mediums found in archaeological digs from ancient sites predating the Han period are shells, the written characters on these narrow flat strips of bamboo were arranged into vertical columns. Yet Chinese hempen paper of the Western Han and early Eastern Han eras was of a coarse quality, by the 3rd century, paper became one of Chinas chief writing mediums. The Han ceramics industry was upheld by private businesses as well as government agencies. Ceramics were used in domestic wares and utensils as well as materials for roof tiles. Kilns of the Han dynasty making grey pottery were able to reach firing temperatures above 1,000 °C, however, hard southern Chinese pottery made from a dense adhesive clay native only in the south was fired at even higher temperatures than grey pottery during the Han
6.
Qin (state)
–
Qin was an ancient Chinese state during the Zhou dynasty. Following extensive Legalist reform in the 3rd century BC, Qin emerged as one of the dominant powers of the Seven Warring States, the empire it established was short-lived but greatly influential on later Chinese history. Its courts and bureaus functioned without delays and with such smoothness that it was as if there were no government at all. According to the 2nd century BC historical text Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, one of his descendents, Boyi, was granted the family name of Ying by King Shun. During the Xia and Shang dynasties, the Ying split in two, a branch in Quanqiu and another branch that lived east of the Yellow River. The latter became the ancestors of the rulers of the Zhao state, the western Ying at Quanqiu were lords over the Xichui, the Western March of the Shang. One, Elai, was killed defending King Zhou during the rebellion that established the Zhou dynasty, the family was allied with the marquesses of Shen, however, and continued to serve under the Zhou. A younger son of line, Feizi, so impressed King Xiao with his horse breeding skills that he was awarded a fief in the valley of Qin. Both lines of the western Ying lived in the midst of the Rong tribes, sometimes fighting their armies and sometimes intermarrying with their kings. In 771 BC, the Marquess of Shen formed an alliance with the Zeng state and Quanrong nomads, Duke Xiang of Qin led his troops to escort King Yous son King Ping of Zhou to Luoyi, where the new capital city of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty was established. In recognition of Duke Xiangs efforts, King Ping formally enfeoffed Duke Xiang as a feudal lord, King Ping further promised to give Qin the land west of Qishan, the former heartland of Zhou, if Qin could expel the Rong tribes that were occupying the land. The Qin viewed the Zhou rulers Wen and Wu as their predecessors, Qins interaction with other states in eastern and central China remained minimal throughout the Spring and Autumn period, except with its neighbour Jin, a large, mainstay vassal of the Zhou. During the early reign of Duke Mu of Qin, the Jin state was a power under the leadership of Duke Xian of Jin. However, after the death of Duke Xian, Jin plunged into a state of conflict as Duke Xians sons fought over the succession. One of them won the contention and became Duke Hui of Jin, Duke Mu of Qin sent relief food supplies and agricultural equipment to Jin. However, Qin was struck by famine later and by then, Jin had recovered, Qin and Jin engaged in several battles over the next few years. During the battles with Jin, Duke Mu heard that one of Duke Xians sons, Chonger, was in exile in the Chu state. After consulting his subjects, Duke Mu sent an emissary to Chu to invite Chonger to Jin, Duke Wen was grateful to Duke Mu and relations between Qin and Jin improved
7.
Eastern Wu
–
Wu, commonly known as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, was one of the three major states that competed for supremacy over China in the Three Kingdoms period. It previously existed from 220–222 as a vassal kingdom nominally under Cao Wei, its rival state and it became an empire in 229 after its founding ruler, Sun Quan, declared himself Emperor. Its name was derived from the place it was based in — the Jiangnan region and it was called Eastern Wu because it occupied most of eastern China in the Three Kingdoms period, and Sun Wu because the family name of its rulers was Sun. During its existence, Wus capital was at Jianye, but at times it was also at Wuchang. Sun Ce broke off relations with Yuan Shu around 196-197 after the latter declared himself emperor — an act deemed as treason against Emperor Xian, the figurehead ruler of the Han dynasty. The warlord Cao Cao, who was the de facto head of government in the Han imperial court, Sun Ce was assassinated in the summer of 200 and was succeeded by his younger brother, Sun Quan. Sun Quan, like his brother, also paid nominal allegiance to Emperor Xian while maintaining autonomous rule over the Wu territories. In 208, Sun Quan allied with the warlord Liu Bei, Sun Quan and Liu Bei maintained their alliance against Cao Cao after the battle for the next ten years or so, despite having some territorial disputes over Jing Province. In 219, Sun Quan severed ties with Liu Bei when he sent his general Lü Meng to invade Lius territories in Jing Province, Guan Yu, who was defending Liu Beis assets in Jing Province, was captured and executed by Sun Quans forces. After that, the boundaries of Sun Quans domain extended from beyond the Jiangdong region to include the part of Jing Province. In 220, Cao Caos son and successor, Cao Pi, ended the Han dynasty by forcing Emperor Xian to abdicate in his favour, Sun Quan agreed to submit to Wei and was granted the title of a vassal king, King of Wu, by Cao Pi. A year later, Liu Bei declared himself emperor and founded the state of Shu Han, in 222, Liu Bei launched a military campaign against Sun Quan to take back Jing Province and avenge Guan Yu, leading to the Battle of Xiaoting. However, Liu Bei suffered a defeat at the hands of Sun Quans general Lu Xun and was forced to retreat to Baidicheng. Liu Beis successor, Liu Shan, and his regent, Zhuge Liang, made peace with Sun Quan later, Sun Quan declared independence from Wei in 222, but continued to rule as King of Wu until 229, when he declared himself Emperor of Wu. His legitimacy was recognised by Shu, Sun Quan ruled for over 30 years and his long reign resulted in stability in southern China. During his reign, Wu engaged Wei in numerous wars, including the battles of Ruxu, Shiting, however, Wu never managed to gain any territory north of the Yangtze River while Wei also never succeeded in conquering the lands south of the Yangtze. The conflict resulted in the emergence of two rivalling factions, each supporting either Sun He or Sun Ba, in Sun Quans imperial court. Sun Quan eventually deposed Sun He and forced Sun Ba to commit suicide, while Lu Xun, Sun Quan appointed his youngest son, Sun Liang, as the crown prince after the incident
8.
Writing
–
Writing is a medium of human communication that represents language and emotion through the inscription or recording of signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spoken language, Writing is not a language but a form of technology that developed as tools developed with human society. Within a language system, writing relies on many of the structures as speech, such as vocabulary, grammar and semantics. The result of writing is called text, and the recipient of text is called a reader. Motivations for writing include publication, storytelling, correspondence and diary, Writing has been instrumental in keeping history, maintaining culture, dissemination of knowledge through the media and the formation of legal systems. As human societies emerged, the development of writing was driven by pragmatic exigencies such as exchanging information, maintaining financial accounts, codifying laws, in both ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica writing may have evolved through calendrics and a political necessity for recording historical and environmental events. H. G. Wells argued that writing has the ability to put agreements, laws and it made the growth of states larger than the old city states possible. It made a continuous historical consciousness possible, the command of the priest or king and his seal could go far beyond his sight and voice and could survive his death. The major writing systems—methods of inscription—broadly fall into four categories, logographic, syllabic, alphabetic, another category, ideographic, has never been developed sufficiently to represent language. A sixth category, pictographic, is insufficient to represent language on its own, a logogram is a written character which represents a word or morpheme. A vast number of logograms are needed to write Chinese characters, cuneiform, and Mayan, where a glyph may stand for a morpheme, many logograms have an ideographic component. For example, in Mayan, the glyph for fin, pronounced ka, was used to represent the syllable ka whenever the pronunciation of a logogram needed to be indicated. In Chinese, about 90% of characters are compounds of an element called a radical with an existing character to indicate the pronunciation. However, such phonetic elements complement the elements, rather than vice versa. A syllabary is a set of symbols that represent syllables. A glyph in a syllabary typically represents a consonant followed by a vowel, or just a vowel alone, phonetically related syllables are not so indicated in the script. For instance, the syllable ka may look nothing like the syllable ki, syllabaries are best suited to languages with a relatively simple syllable structure, such as Japanese. Other languages that use syllabic writing include the Linear B script for Mycenaean Greek, Cherokee, Ndjuka, an English-based creole language of Surinam, most logographic systems have a strong syllabic component
9.
Palm-leaf manuscript
–
Palm-leaf manuscripts are manuscripts made out of dried palm leaves. Palm leaves were used as writing materials in South Asia and in Southeast Asia dating back to the 5th century BCE and their use began in South Asia, and spread elsewhere, as texts on dried and smoke treated palm leaves of Borassus species or the Ola leaf. One of the oldest surviving palm leaf manuscript is a Sanskrit Shaivism text from the 9th-century, discovered in Nepal, palm leaf manuscripts were written in ink on rectangular cut and cured palm leaf sheet. Each sheet typically had a hole through which a string could pass through, a palm leaf text thus created would typically last between a few decades and about 600 years before it decayed due to dampness, insect activity, mold and fragility. Thus the document had to be copied onto new sets of dried palm leaves, the oldest surviving palm leaf Indian manuscripts have been found in colder, drier climates such as in parts of Nepal, Tibet and central Asia, the source of 1st-millennium CE manuscripts. The individual sheets of palm leaves were called Patra or Parna in Sanskrit, the famous 5th-century CE Indian manuscript called the Bower Manuscript discovered in Chinese Turkestan, was written on birch-bark sheets shaped in the form of treated palm leaves. Hindu temples often served as centers where ancient manuscripts were used for learning. Archaeological and epigraphical evidence indicates existence of libraries called Sarasvati-bhandara, dated possibly to early 12th-century and employing librarians, palm leaf manuscripts were also preserved inside Jain temples and in Buddhist monasteries. With the spread of Indian culture to Southeast Asian countries like as Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines, one of the oldest surviving Sanskrit manuscripts on palm leaves is of the Parameshvaratantra, a Shaiva Siddhanta text of Hinduism. It is from the 9th-century, and dated to about 828 CE, the discovered palm-leaf collection also includes a few parts of another text, the Jñānārṇavamahātantra and currently held by the University of Cambridge. With the introduction of printing presses in the early 19th century, many governments are making efforts to preserve what is left of their palm leaf documents. Palm leaf manuscripts of Odisha include scriptures, pictures of Devadasi, some of the early discoveries of Odia palm leaf manuscripts include writings like Smaradipika, Ratimanjari, Pancasayaka and Anangaranga in both Odia and Sanskrit. State Museum of Odisha at Bhubaneswar houses 40,000 palm leaf manuscripts. Most of them are written in the Odia script, the oldest manuscript here belongs to the 14th century but the text can be dated to the 2nd century. In 1997 The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation recognised the Tamil Medical Manuscript Collection as part of the Memory of the World Register. A very good example of usage of palm leaf manuscripts to store the history is a Tamil grammar book named Tolkāppiyam which was written around 3rd century BCE. A global digitalization project led by the Tamil Heritage Foundation collects, in Indonesia the palm-leaf manuscript is called lontar. The Indonesian word is the form of Old Javanese rontal. It is composed of two Old Javanese words, namely ron leaf and tal Borassus flabellifer, palmyra palm, due to the shape of the palmyra palms leaves, which are spread like a fan, these trees are also known as fan trees
10.
Borassus
–
Borassus is a genus of five species of fan palms, native to tropical regions of Africa, Asia and New Guinea. These massive palms can grow up to 30 m high and have robust trunks with distinct leaf scars, in some species the trunk develops a distinct swelling just below the crown, the leaves are fan-shaped, 2–3 m long and with spines along the petiole margins. The leaf sheath has a cleft at its base, through which the inflorescences appear, old leaf sheaths are retained on the trunk. The fruits are 15–25 cm wide, roughly spherical and each contain 1-3 large seeds, depending on species, fruit color varies from black to brown, yellow or orange, the fibrous pulp is aromatic and sweet to taste. Each seed is enclosed in a woody endocarp, which protects it when the fruit is consumed by elephants, monkeys, the palmyra palm has long been one of the most important trees of Cambodia and India, where it has over 800 uses. The leaves are used for thatching, mats, baskets, fans, hats, umbrellas, in Cambodia, the tree is a national floral symbol/emblem that is seen growing around Angkor Wat. Palmyra palm can live for over 100 years, in ancient India and Indonesia, Palmyra leaves were used as writing paper, with their parallel veins providing a useful rule. In India, mature leaves of size, shape and texture were chosen. Once dry enough, the surfaces were polished with pumice, cut to the proper size. Each leaf has four pages and a stylus is used to write, completed leaves are then tied up as sheaves. The black timber is hard, heavy, and durable and highly valued for construction, especially in structures exposed to water, such as wharves, fences, the tree also yields many types of food. The young plants are cooked as a vegetable or roasted and pounded to make meal, the fruits are eaten roasted or raw, as are the young, jelly-like seeds. It is called Gula Jawa in Indonesia and is used in Javanese cuisine. The roots can be dried to form Odiyal, a hard chewable snack, in addition, the tree sap is taken as a laxative, and medicinal values have been ascribed to other parts of the plant. The Palmyra tree is the tree of Tamil Nadu. In Tamil culture it is called karpaha, nungu celestial tree, the recently germinated seeds form fleshy sprouts below the surface which can be boiled and eaten as a fibrous, nutritious food. The germinated seeds hard shell is cut open to take out the crunchy kernel which tastes like a water chestnut. The ripe fibrous outer layer of the fruits is edible after boiling or roasting, when the fruit is tender, the kernel inside the hard shell is an edible jelly that is refreshing and rich in minerals
11.
Corypha umbraculifera
–
Corypha umbraculifera, the talipot palm, is a species of palm native to eastern and southern India and Sri Lanka. It is also grown in Cambodia, Myanmar, China, Thailand and it is a flowering plant with the largest inflorescence in the world. It lives up to 60 years before bearing fruits and flowers and it is one of the largest palms with individual specimens having reached heights of up to 25 m with stems up to 1.3 m in diameter. It is a fan palm, with large, palmate leaves up to 5 m in diameter, with a petiole up to 4 m, and up to 130 leaflets. The talipot palm bears the largest inflorescence of any plant, 6–8 m long, consisting of one to several small flowers borne on a branched stalk that forms at the top of the trunk. The talipot palm is monocarpic, flowering once, when it is 30 to 80 years old. It takes about a year for the fruit to mature, producing thousands of round, yellow-green fruit 3–4 cm in diameter, the talipot palm is cultivated in South India and Sri Lanka. It is also cultivated in Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and it is also grown sparsely in China. Historically, the leaves were written upon in various Southeast Asian cultures using a stylus to create palm leaf manuscripts. In the Philippines, it is known as buri or buli. The leaves are used for thatching, and the sap is tapped to make palm wine. In South India, the leaves are used to make umbrellas for agricultural workers. The tree is known as kudapana in Malayalam, talo in Odia, and kudaipanai in Tamil, the plant is known as tala in Sri Lanka, by local Sinhalese people. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, international Union for Conservation of Nature
12.
Birch bark manuscript
–
Birch bark manuscripts are documents written on pieces of the inner layer of birch bark, which was commonly used for writing before the advent of mass production of paper. Evidence of birch bark for writing goes back centuries and in various cultures. The oldest dated birch bark manuscripts are numerous Gandhāran Buddhist texts from approximately the 1st century CE, believed to have originated in Afghanistan, Sanskrit birch bark manuscripts written with Brahmi script have been dated to the first few centuries CE. Several early Sanskrit writers, such as Kālidāsa, Sushruta, the bark of Betula utilis is still used today in India and Nepal for writing sacred mantras. Russian texts discovered in Veliky Novgorod have been dated to approximately the 9th to 15th century CE, most of those documents are letters written by various people in the Old Novgorod dialect. The first letter of Ogham is beith, beithe means birch, Buddhist manuscripts written in the Gāndhārī language are likely the oldest extant Indic texts, dating to approximately the 1st century CE. The birch bark texts were stored in jars and acquired by the British Library in 1994. They were written in Kharoṣṭhī and believed to be originally from Afghanistan due to similar birch bark manuscripts that were discovered in eastern Afghanistan, since 1994, a similar collection of Gāndhārī texts from the same era, called the Senior collection, has also surfaced. The British Library birch bark manuscripts were in the form of scrolls and they were five to nine inches wide, and consisted of twelve to eighteen inch long overlapping rolls that had been glued together to form longer scrolls. A thread sewn through the edges also helped hold them together, the script was written in black ink. The longest intact scroll from the British Library collection is eighty-four inches long, the collection includes a variety of known commentaries and sutras, including a Dhammapada, discourses of Shakyamuni Buddha that include the Rhinoceros Sutra, avadānas, and abhidharma texts. The condition of the scrolls indicates that they were already in poor condition, scholars concluded that the fragmented scrolls were given a ritual interment, much like Jewish texts stored in a genizah. The bark of Betula utilis has been used for centuries in India for writing scriptures and its use was especially prevalent in historical Kashmir. Use of bark as paper has been mentioned by early Sanskrit writers such as Kalidasa, Sushruta, in Kashmir, early scholars recounted that all of their books were written on Himalayan birch bark until the 16th century. A fragment of a birch bark scroll in Sanskrit, in the Brāhmī script, was part of the British Library Gandhara scroll collection and it is presumed to be from North India, dating to sometime during the first few centuries CE. Birch bark manuscripts in Brāhmī script were discovered in an ancient Buddhist monastery in Jaulian, near Taxila in the Punjab in Pakistan, the Bakhshali manuscript consists of seventy birch bark fragments written in Sanskrit and Prakrit, in the Śāradā script. Based on the language and content, it is estimated to be from the 2nd to 3rd century CE, the text discusses various mathematical techniques. A large collection of birch bark scrolls were discovered in Afghanistan during the war in the late 20th and early 21st centuries
