A NON-TRIVIAL SOLUTION: How a Eunuch Gave the World Paper
Qiu Ying. Spring Morning in the Han Palace. Fragment. 16th century
ATTENTION — A QUESTION!
Writing is useless if there is nothing to write on. What did a court eunuch of the Chinese emperor realize at the beginning of our era in order to solve this problem in practically the same way as we do today?
The answer — a little later.
THE FIRST MESSAGES
O
ne of the most important and fundamental differences between humans and animals is speech — the ability to convey something, through the sounds we produce, to those who hear them. The speed of sound is 330 meters per second — it is heard almost instantly, at least over dozens of meters. But humans rapidly became more complex, their needs expanded, and such a system of communication proved insufficient. They wanted the ability to transmit information to another person over much greater distances — even if it required more time. I do not know how this was first done. Perhaps someone picked a tasty fruit and asked another to carry it back to the camp — «Come and enjoy». But the fact remains that the earliest attempts at such communication involved the transmission of certain objects. This was even called object writing. A typical example of object writing is the message the Scythians sent to King Darius: a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. Darius decided that the Scythians were surrendering their land, water, sky, and weapons to him, while the Scythians meant that unless the Persians flew away like birds, hid in the ground like mice, or dived into the water like frogs, they would all perish from Scythian arrows. An inconvenient form of writing — try making sense of it…
CLAY BOOKS
A little later, people realized that there was no need to send mice and frogs — they would die and start to smell. One could simply draw the same mouse or frog. Not everyone is capable of that, so a simplified drawing could be invented, one that everyone would agree represents a frog. That was convenient too. But what should all this be drawn on? And in a way that would be easy to carry or pass along? It could be carved into stone — that certainly would not break or tear easily. But how would you carry such a stone afterward? Perhaps that would do for royal decrees — if ordered, someone would carry it. But something simpler was needed… The first major breakthrough in solving this problem was cuneiform, which was pressed with a wooden stick onto a tablet of damp clay. The tablet could then be fired in a kiln or simply dried in the sun, after which it could be carried very far and preserved for a very long time. The earliest cuneiform records were entirely practical — bookkeeping and accounting. Later, denunciations to kings were also written down and sent — thousands of tablets containing compromising information have survived. And in the library of King Ashurbanipal, works of fiction were preserved as well — for example, The Epic of Gilgamesh.
REED FOR WRITING
A more convenient method of writing was available to the Egyptians — they had papyrus growing there, a tall reed that could be unrolled into a flat surface and whose strips could be glued together into fairly long scrolls. This was much more convenient and, even more importantly, much lighter in weight. They wrote on papyrus with wedge-shaped pieces of the same papyrus — trimmed, dipped into ink, and used for writing. The ink was made from soot or ochre mixed with gum arabic, stored dry in small cakes, and diluted with water as needed. Clearly simpler than scraping clay. Papyrus proved so convenient that many ancient states used it. Those who did not grow their own bought it from the Egyptians, who cultivated it specifically for sale. And from around the 3rd century BCE, papyrus was cultivated in Sicily in an attempt to meet the demand. We know the name of papyrus not only from Egypt. The Greeks called it biblios, hence «Bible» — a book, and thus the name of the Holy Scripture. In Latin, it was called not only papyrus but also charta — a word that has survived in many languages to this day.
THE BUSINESS OF HIDES
A monopoly is always a dangerous temptation. King Eumenes II of Pergamon decided to assemble a library no less grand than the famous Alexandrian one. The Ptolemies, who ruled Egypt at the time, did not like this idea and simply forbade the sale of papyrus to him — write on whatever you wish… But there is little real benefit in such temptation — there is always a way around it. The craftsmen of Pergamon recalled diphthera — treated animal skin used for writing since the Greco-Persian Wars — improved it and obtained an even better writing material: parchment. Parchment was unlikely to have been cheaper than papyrus, but it was more convenient and of higher quality — almost certainly. It could even be reused — scrape off the old text and write a new one on the same surface. Many ancient texts were lost in this way, and restoring them is rarely possible. Parchment was actively used for a very long time and even survived into the age of printing. Most copies of the famous Gutenberg Bible were printed on paper, but copies on parchment have also survived to this day. For a time, paper and parchment were considered interchangeable.
WEST IS WEST, EAST IS EAST
And how was this issue handled on the other side of the world — in China? They did not arrive at parchment there, papyrus did not grow in Southeast Asia, and hieroglyphs had long since been invented — so what did they draw them on? At first, they used turtle shells, but where could they get enough turtles? They began writing on silk scrolls, but that was outrageously expensive — silk was valued literally at its weight in gold. They also invented and attempted to use clay tablets — but did not find them very satisfactory. The most common material became bamboo strips tied together into scrolls. Sometimes bamboo slips were also used. Each could hold about thirty characters, and Chinese writers were prolific and verbose. So transporting a single book sometimes required an entire cart. One could hardly read for pleasure that way — there would not be enough carts.
THE FORERUNNER OF PAPER
Sericulture came to the rescue — silkworm cocoons had to be boiled and then mashed in water until the mass became uniform. When this mass was removed and the water drained off, silk wadding remained. From it, through further processes, silk itself was produced. Though not only silk — something else as well… On the mats on which the silk was pressed, a thin fibrous layer remained. Someone perceptively noticed that if this layer were dried, it turned into a thin sheet of soft, relatively smooth, and sufficiently durable material. They tried writing on it — and it worked perfectly. They then thought of using defective cocoons to obtain this valuable material — after all, they would otherwise be discarded. The technology was almost the same — boiling, washing, grinding, drying. It turned out somewhat cheaper, but still very expensive — silk is silk.
THE COURT EUNUCH
At this point, an important figure appears in history — Cai Lun. He was born in 50 CE, in the Han Empire. He was a eunuch, and this was not necessarily the result of violence — many voluntarily became eunuchs, as certain court positions could be held only by them. Cai Lun, judging by the available records, was no ordinary man. At the age of fifteen, he entered the imperial palace — and probably not into the lowest position, for any post near the emperor was a good one. Eventually, he rose to a title comparable to that of a prince. It is unlikely that he was assigned such a humble task as inventing a new writing material — almost certainly, it was his own initiative.
Eunuchs had no shortage of responsibilities — for example, the famous voyage of the Chinese fleet into the Indian Ocean was led by the eunuch Zheng He. Cai Lun also had military expertise — he rose to the high office of head of the imperial arsenal. He personally invented various types of weapons for the Chinese army and, moreover, manufactured them himself, with considerable skill. Nevertheless, it was he who, in 105 CE, submitted to the proper authorities a report on his important invention. Emperor He of Han evaluated the report in the highest possible terms — he granted the inventor a very substantial monetary reward and the title of minister.
IT ALL SEEMS SIMPLE ENOUGH
How did Cai Lun arrive at his remarkable invention? Let us break it down. We should keep in mind that he already knew about «wadding paper» — the very byproduct of silk production mentioned earlier. Its quality was high; the obstacle was cost and the scale of production. He also knew about an improved method of producing «wadding paper», when hemp — a coarse fibre from the stems of cannabis — began to be added to it in order to increase output. Hemp fibre is obtained when the hemp mass is soaked in running water — sometimes for a very long time, for months and even years. What is hemp? Essentially, it is a plant fibre. Might there be other plant fibres suitable for this process? Generally speaking, the more thoroughly plant fibres are pounded, the less they differ from one another. What else would work? And one more thing: why are we talking only about plants with usable fibres? Many things — fabrics, for instance — are largely made of plant fibres. Could they also be useful for something? It would be worth checking carefully…
ATTENTION — THE CORRECT ANSWER!
If different plant fibres are suitable, let them be as varied as possible. Cai Lun found an almost free and fairly abundant source of plant fibres — old fishing nets. To these he added mulberry fibres, wood ash, hemp, and old rags. He pounded all of this as thoroughly as possible, spread the mass onto a mould with a bamboo screen, dried it in the sun, and smoothed it with stones. The result satisfied him.
RAPID ADOPTION
Cai Lun ensured that productive manufacturing technologies were in place — the mixture of pounded fibres was boiled, turned into pulp, ground into a paste, and mixed with water. Thin sheets of pulp were lifted through a screen and overturned onto smooth boards. The sheet that resulted was light, durable, and even. Very quickly, the new writing material became highly popular and began actively displacing its predecessors. The method proved economically viable and, in modern terms, environmentally friendly — making use of unwanted rags and old fishing nets. Soon, the technology was refined and began to develop rapidly. It turned out that paper could be made from abundant and inexpensive materials: tree bark, reeds, and, especially conveniently, bamboo — something China certainly did not lack. By the 4th century, bamboo slips had virtually fallen out of use for writing — paper had fully and successfully replaced them. The availability of such a high-quality and inexpensive writing material clearly benefited the already highly cultured Chinese civilization.
BEYOND CHINA
As is well known, China is not particularly fond of letting the secrets of its technologies spread across the world. But in 751, at the Battle of Talas — somewhere in present-day Kazakhstan — between the Arabs and the Chinese, the Arabs captured several papermaking masters, and along with them, their secrets. The Arabs quickly mastered papermaking and clearly understood how valuable and important a commodity it was — for five centuries, they successfully supplied it to Europe. They produced a wide range of paper grades — from fairly coarse varieties to thin and light sheets, specially made for pigeon post. Europe adopted papermaking considerably later than both China and the Arab world. The first to learn the craft from the Arabs were their closest neighbors, the Spaniards, who, until 1492, shared the Iberian Peninsula with them, with varying success. From Spain, the knowledge spread to the rest of Europe. In 1154, paper began to be produced in Italy; in 1228, in Germany; and in 1309, in England. In the following centuries, paper became widespread throughout the world. According to the French bibliographer Sim, our era can rightly be called the «paper age».
WHAT THIS TEACHES US
The speed and convenience of transmitting information are both an accelerator and an ally of civilization’s quality. The explosion in the spread of knowledge would have been impossible without printing — but on what would all those books have been printed without paper? The main secret of any invention is the very possibility of making it. If people know that something can be done, even if they do not yet know how exactly, they will think it through and find out. After all, they already know it is possible. Properly assess the power of analogy. If there are two types of plant fibres suitable for making paper, there will certainly be a third. By reasoning in the same way, you will find a fourth. And a fifth, and a hundredth… Do not erase old texts — not only from parchment. Do not erase them from anywhere — everything serves a purpose; later you will regret it, but it will be too late… One of the most outstanding inventors in the history of humanity, Cai Lun, ended his life tragically — he miscalculated in a palace intrigue, fell from favor, and took poison. Is it not better to invent than to weave intrigues?
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