India ink (British English: Indian ink) or China ink (also Chinese ink) is a simple black or coloured ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing and outlining, especially when inking comic books and comic strips. India ink is also used in medical applications. Compared to other inks, such as the iron gall ink previously common in Europe, India ink is noted for its deep, rich black colour. It is commonly applied with a paintbrush (such as an ink brush) or a dip pen. In East Asian traditions such as ink wash painting and Chinese calligraphy, India ink is commonly used in a solid form called an inkstick.
Composition Basic India ink is composed of a variety of fine soot, known as lampblack, combined with water to form a liquid. No binder material is necessary: the carbon molecules are in colloidal suspension and form a waterproof layer after drying. A binding agent such as gelatin or, more commonly, shellac may be added to make the ink more durable once dried. India ink is commonly sold in bottled form, as well as a solid form as an inkstick (most commonly, a stick), which must be ground and mixed with water before use. If a binder is used, India ink may be waterproof or non-waterproof. Artist pens that contain India ink use an acrylic based binder rather than shellac.
History
Woods and Woods (2000) state that the process of making India ink was known in China as early as the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, in Neolithic China, whereas Needham (1985) states that inkmaking commenced perhaps as early as 3 millennia ago in China. India ink was first invented in China, but the English term India(n) ink was coined due to their later trade with India. A considerable number of oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty contain incised characters with black pigment from a carbonaceous material identified as ink. Numerous documents written in ink on precious stones as well as bamboo or wooden tablets dating to the Spring and Autumn, Warring States, and Qin period have been uncovered. A cylindrical artifact made from black ink has been found in Qin tombs, dating back to the 3rd century BC during the Warring States or dynastic period, from Yunmeng, Hubei.
India ink has been in use in India since at least the 4th century BC, where it was called masi, an admixture of several substances. Indian documents written in Kharosthi with this ink have been unearthed in as far as Xinjiang, China. The practice of writing with ink and a sharp-pointed needle in Tamil and other Dravidian languages was common practice from antiquity in South India, and so several ancient Buddhist and Jain scripts in India were compiled in ink. In India, the carbon black from which India ink is produced is obtained by burning bones, tar, pitch, and other substances. The traditional Chinese method of making ink was to grind a mixture of hide glue, carbon black, lampblack, and bone black pigment with a mortar and pestle, then pour it into a ceramic dish where it could dry. To use the dry mixture, a wet brush would be applied until it rehydrated, or more commonly in East Asian calligraphy, a dry solid ink stick was rubbed against an inkstone with water. Like Chinese black inks, the black inks of the Greeks and Romans were also stored in solid form before being ground and mixed with water for usage. In contrast to Chinese inks that were permanent, these inks could be washed away with water. Pine soot was traditionally favored in Chinese inkmaking. Several studies observed that 14th-century Chinese inks are made from very small and uniform pine soot; the inks are superior in these aspects to modern soot inks. The author Song Yingxing (c. 1600–1660) of the Ming dynasty has described the inkmaking process from pine soot in his work Tiangong Kaiwu. From the Song dynasty onwards, lampblack also became a favored pigment for the manufacturing of black inks. It was made by combustion in lamps with wicks, using animal, vegetable, and mineral oils.
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