In the book, The Tarim Mummies, about two thirds the way down page 321: "The oldest archaeological find of paper employed as a writing medium for writing dates to about AD 110 and our major source of early paper documents is, not suprisingly, the desiccating sands of the Tarim Basin."
Earlier on this same page it says that the Chinese were the earliest users of paper and that it was used for "clothes, hats, belts, armour, packing material, paper handkerchiefs, toilet paper, wallpaper, kites, currency(9th century), cards, umbrellas and etc. - and the Chinese were invariably the earliest to utilize them."
Later this evening I will look in my book, The Mummies Of Urumchi, for the source of the exact quote.
Ah, I see. Thanks. But it does not mention that a Tocharian script was written on the paper, let alone Tocharian A. If Tocharian A was really written on this paper, even a 110 CE paper, many in Indo-European linguistic studies would be a-flurry with excitement at finding examples of Tocharian script that predate known Tocharian writing by almost half a millennium. By 110 CE, though, the Han Dynasty had a well-established presence in the Tarim Basin, so it is quite likely that this paper was inscribed with ancient Hanzi.
"The oldest archaeological find of paper employed as a writing medium for writing dates to about AD 110 and our major source of early paper documents is, not suprisingly, the desiccating sands of the Tarim Basin."