On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c3.4

c3.4

Dr. Grierson’s important researches at Mahābodhi Gayā, the results of which lately have been reprinted in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1896, p. 52 ff., have made it necessary to rewrite the passage (p. 31 f.) on the remnants of the masons’ alphabet, found there by Sir A. Cunningham, though the general conclusions to be drawn from them remain the same. A communication, kindly placed at my disposal by M. Sylvain Lévi, has furnished from Chinese sources a distinct tradition (p. 33), asserting that the signs for the liquid vowels really are later additions to the Brāhma alphabet, as the statement of the Jaina scriptures regarding the original number of its characters and the palaeographic evidence suggested. Mr. Rapson’s discovery of syllables, both in Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī, on the Persian *sigloi* (pp. 51, 113) has further corroborated the conclusions regarding the early prevalence of both alphabets in Northwestern India and has raised a strong presumption that both alphabets were used in the same districts already in the fourth century B. C. during the Akhaemenian period. Finally, Mr. Takukusu’s article on Pali Elements in Chinese has brought us the news that the tradition, asserting an early preservation of the Buddhist scriptures in MSS., is more ancient than the statement in the Life of Hiuen Tsiang could lead us to suppose, and nearly, if not quite as old as the contradictory statement of the Dīpavaṁsa and the Mahāvaṁsa (p. 91, note). And the most important discovery of a Kharoṣṭhī MS. at Khotan shows that during the Kuṣana period Buddhist MSS. did exist in Northern India and probably had been in use for some time (p. 122 f.).