On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c5.99

c5.99

Another passage of the Jaina Samavāyāṅga Sūtra makes it possible to show how the popular Brāhma alphabet looked about 300 B. C. The Samavāyāṅga includes a detailed abstract of the lost *Dṛṣṭivāda*, the twelfth of the Jaina Aṅgas, and asserts that according to this work, the *Bambhī livī* or Brāhma [27] alphabet consisted of 46 *māuyakkhara* (*mātṛkākṣara*) or radical signs.¹ The commentator Abhayadeva says that this number comes out by deducting from the (in his time, saec. XI) ordinary alphabet the vowels *ṛ*, *ṝ*, *ḷ*, *ḹ* and the lingual *ḷa*, but including *kṣa*. The reckoning is correct, as may be seen from a comparison of the oldest written alphabet, that on the Horiuzi palmleaf, which gives 51 signs, viz:—