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. Indian documents written in Kharosthi with this ink have been unearthed in as far as Xinjiang, China. 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.
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. 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 considerable number of oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty contain incised characters with black pigment from a carbonaceous material identified as ink. India ink was first invented in China, but the English term India(n) ink was coined due to their later trade with India.
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. A solid ink stick used for the preparation of ink
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