Note 230 — ESSAYS. (continued 3)

Libri sacri scritti in tela di lino, sorta di volumi antichissimi molte di quali vide Frontone custoditi in Anagni.—Micali. Storia degli Antichi Popoli Italiani, page 32.

In Wilks’ History of the South of India, there is an account of the cudduttum, curruthum, or currut, used as books in that province. It is a strip of cotton cloth, covered on both sides with a mixture of paste and charcoal. The writing is done with a pencil of lapis ollaris, called balopium, and may be rubbed out like that on a slate; the cloth is folded in leaves like a pocket-map, and tied up between thin boards painted and ornamented. This mode of writing was anciently used for records and other public papers, and in some parts of the country is still employed by merchants and shopkeepers. It is very durable, indeed probably more so than either paper, parchment, or the palm leaf. Colonel Wilks supposes it to be the linen or cotton cloth on which Arrian states that the Indians wrote.