On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c6.15

c6.15

These facts, to which some more might be added, are sufficient to show, that the very common idea¹ of the homogeneousness of the characters of the Edicts and of the absence of local varieties, is erroneous. The differences between the writing of the northern and the southern versions are quite as considerable as those, found four hundred forty years later, between the letters of the northern and southern inscriptions of the first and second centuries A. D.² And it must be kept in mind that the circumstances, under which the Edicts were engraved, were not favourable to a full expression of the local varieties of the letters. Copies were sent out from Pāṭaliputra into the provinces, which were recopied and, as the dialectic differences in the language and occasional peculiarities in the wording prove, also recast by the clerks of the district-governors, before they were made over for engraving to the masons. It seems only natural to assume that the characters of the copies prepared at Pāṭaliputra influenced the writing of the provincial clerks, and caused the introduction of forms, otherwise not usual in the several [38] provinces.¹ Such a suspicion is the more natural, as the provincial clerks have in no case completely changed the language, but have always allowed some Māgadhisms to stand. But, however that may be, local differences are traceable in the writing of the several versions and they prove that the Brāhma alphabet had had a long history before the third century B. C. If the slowness of the change of the forms, and the comparative insignificance of the local variations which the inscriptions of the next four or five centuries show, are taken as the standard, it will be necessary to assume that the letters of the Edicts had been used at least during four or five hundred years.