On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c5.69

c5.69

It is a well known fact that the sculptures on the Sānchi and Bharahut or Bharaut Stūpas contain representations of various Jātakas. On the Sānchi Stūpa the Sāma Jātaka has been identified³ and others, like the Mahākapi Jātaka, may be recognised even on the Plates in Dr. Fergusson’s Tree and Serpent [16] Worship. On the Bharahut Stūpa twenty-one sculptured scenes, to which the titles are mostly added, have been found to correspond with Birth Stories in Professor Fausböll’s printed edition, and Dr. E. Hultzsch has shown that even a Pāda of a verse, used as a title, agrees with the printed text.⁴ Among them there are also two, the Rurumiga and the Asadisa, which have been quoted above as witnesses for the use of writing. Both the Stūpas date from the third century B. C., some additions only belonging to the second century. The age of the Sānchi Stūpa is proved by a fragment of an Aśoka Edict, which agrees in part with the so-called Kosambī Edict on the Allahabad Pillar, and by the fact that the characters of more than nine tenth of its nearly four hundred inscriptions fully agree with those of the Aśoka Edicts, while about two score show slightly more advanced forms.¹ Similarly, nearly all the hundred and fifty three published inscriptions of the Bharahut Stūpa are written in the alphabet of the Edicts, and it is chiefly Dhanabhūti's inscription on the gateway-pillar dated "in the reign of the Śuṅgas", which is incised in more modern letters. The pieces with the later characters are, of course, additions or repairs, made [17] after the completion of the original structure.² Under these circumstances it is very probable that in the third century B. C. our collection of the Jātakas formed part of the Buddhist Canon, which, as the Bairat Edict, addressed to the Māgadha Saṅgha, and various inscriptions on the Stūpas indicate, was then fully settled. Both on the Sānchi and Bharahut Stūpas we read of monks who had the title *pacanekāyika* (*pāñcanai-* *kāyika*)¹ i. e. 'teacher of the five Nikāyas', and in Bharahut appears also a *peṭaki* i. e. 'a person who knew or taught the Piṭaka or Piṭakas', about whose designation more will be said below.