There was once a Raja Siripada, a Malay and Muslim, about forty years-old, and “is rather corpulent… He has ten scribes, who write down his affairs on thin bark of trees, and are called chiritoles.”

The writer of narratives, that is what chiritoles, or cheritatulis has been taken to mean. Literally we can understand it as jurutulis, or more direct – tukang cerita. Scribes.

The episode above is from the Venetian Antonio Pigafetta, who joined Ferdinand Magellan in his expedition to the Spice Islands. Pigafetta, known for being the chronicler of the voyage, had served on both Magellan and Elcano.

When Magellan reached Brunei in 1521 – remember that then, Brunei covered some half of the island of Borneo, and stretching to the islands of the Philippines – Pigafetta noted that paper was used as gifts to kings, queens and chiefs of the court to establish friendship.

Despite the many scribes used in the courts, he noted that paper was not used for writing. Barks were used instead.

In the Malay Archipelago, paper arrived both from the West, and from the East. From the former, paper mills were established around Baghdad in the eight century after the Battle of Talas in 751 AD.

This took place near present-day Samarkand, at the banks of the Tharaz River. The Arabs won and captured the Chinese. In order to release their prisoners, the captors would ask what useful knowledge that can be transmitted to them.

The Chinese prisoners were skillful in making paper. At that time, the Chinese used starch and mulberry bark.

Soon, a few decades later, Baghdad began to manufacture paper. By the 10th century, paper became the dominant writing material among Muslims.

The Arabs and Persians who arrived at the shores of the Malay Archipelago to trade and spread Islam brought paper as a commodity, writing material and as a vehicle for theological and cultural ideas in the spread of Islam.

The early arrival of paper would be from the peoples of the Atas Angin, also referring to the Arab-Persian world. Intensive contacts occurred much around the 12th – 14th centuries.

By definition, paper means “A fibrous material made by breaking down vegetable fibers, purifying them, interweaving them into a compact web and pressing them into thin sheets” (Harrod’s Librarians’ Glossary and Reference Book (1986).

Dr. Wan Ali Wan Mamat, an authority on Malay manuscripts and its conservation, believes that paper “used for writing Malay manuscripts were of foreign origin, either Occidental or Oriental.”

His book An Introduction to Malay Manuscripts (2014), notes there are no records suggesting that paper was made locally by the Malays, unlike ink, pen and binding.

However, there is a writing material, called daluang, made by the people in Java which has been often classified as paper.

Wan Ali argues that it cannot be qualified as such because it was made from certain tree barks by flattening and softening them using hammer and water, “but it never passed through the process of breaking down the barks into fibers and later interweaving them into tiny sheets.”

The majority of paper used in Malay manuscripts were of European origin, mostly from Italy, Holland, Britain and France. They were believed to have been brought into the Archipelago either “from the Middle-East or direct from Europe.”

Wan Ali, a Senior Fellow at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, International Islamic University Malaysia adds that paper was also brought into the Archipelago by those who returned from the pilgrimage in Mekah.

Many of the Malay manuscripts, especially those relating to Islam, were written in Mekah and Madinah. The Haramaian was earlier the centre of learning for those from the Archipelago, and consequently for a period of time, the centre of writing of Malay manuscripts.

When these works reached the Tanah Air, in the form of examplars or copies, they were later copied further by those interested in the works.

The paper used in Mekah in the 18th and 19th centuries especially, were not manufactured locally or made by the Arabs. These were European-made paper. European paper was brought to the Archipelago by the Dutch and British.

Very few Malay manuscripts were written on paper manufactured from China. “Oriental” paper as described by Wan Ali, “were mostly flimsy and thin and if not written on carefully, the writing could get smudged.”

He suggests this as the main reason for Malays avoiding the use of paper from China. Perhaps a few may have also come from Japan through Japanese traders in Taiwan, the Philippines and the southern coast of China in the past.

It was also noted that that nothing is known of “oriental paper” originating from India or the Arab lands. So far, not a single Malay manuscript has been found to have used such paper, which are made from flax fibers as raw material. European paper uses cotton, while Chinese and Japanese use mulberry, bamboo and other plant materials.

Abdullah Munsyi related that in early 19th century Melaka Malay schools, a thin board of very fine-grained wood called Pulay (Pulai or Alstonia Scholarsis), giving a light cork-like wood whose surface is whitened with white clay, was used as an alternative to paper. The story continues.