On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c6.3

c6.3

As regards Aśoka’s Edicts, even a cursory inspection of good impressions or of trustworthy facsimiles, such as those of Drs. Burgess, Fleet and Hultzsch, reveals the existence of numerous differences in the formation of the several characters. A more careful study shows not only that almost every letter¹ has two, three, half a dozen or more sometimes widely divergent forms, but also that certain peculiarities are confined to particular districts, as well as that the great majority of the apparently or really more advanced forms, which appear more or less constantly in the inscriptions of the next three or four centuries, are found already in the Edicts. And it is significant that the local differences observable permit us to speak of a Northern and a Southern variety of the ordinary Brāhma alphabet, between which, as in later times, roughly reckoning, the river Narmadā marks, the boundary line.