On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c5.120

c5.120

However that may be, and even if the additional *ja* and *ṭa* mentioned by Sir A. Cunningham are left out of count, it is evident that the masons had numbered the pillar bases, and probably also the corresponding shafts, with the letters of the Brāhma alphabet arranged according to the phonetic principles of the grammarians and of the Bārākhadī. As the first base of the southern row is marked with the letter *A* and No. 12, the first of the northern row, with *ka*, it is further evident that the masons' alphabet included eleven vowel-signs, one less than the Bārākhadī. And it becomes also probable that among them were, as Sir A. Cunningham conjectured, the signs for Ā, I, Ī, U, Ū, E, AI, O, AU and that the last was either *Aṃ* or *Aḥ*,³ one of them being inadvertently omitted. The liquid vowels cannot have had a place here, since they would make the total of the vowel signs sixteen and it would be necessary to assume that the masons skipped five of them.