birch-bark paper for Pali Mss?

Dear All,

At this time of year in Canada I often spend part of my day tidying up my
forested lot and cutting up firewood for next fall and winter. This year, I
have to cut down 9 dead trees, 8 of which are white birches (Betula
papyrifera, I think). I've cut down three of these birches so far. The logs
are sawn up into 16" lengths with a 36" bow saw then split with an axe.
Splitting birch has never been easy for me and today I found out why. It's
due to the bark's unusual strength. I learned that one should peel off the
bark before splitting. Now I've got this growing pile of birch bark and I'm
thinking that perhaps I should look into preparing some birch-bark paper for
writing Pali on as an experiment. The inner layers of the bark have a
beautiful reddish-orange colour--a good colour for the bhikkhu's robes.
Haven't the earliest extant Buddhist manuscripts survived on birch-bark?

Although I'm hardly active online these days, I continue to be interested in
Kaccaayana's grammar and have been devoting quite a bit of time to it in the
past few weeks.

Best wishes,
Jim


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