On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c6.33

c6.33

This estimate carries us back to the period, for which the passages of the Jātakas, the Pācittiya and the Mahāvagga, quoted above The first point, which is of considerable general importance for Indian palaeography, will best become intelligible by a brief review of the epigraphy of those districts where Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions occur. From the third century we have the two Kharoṣṭhī versions of the Aśoka Edicts, incised in the northwestern corner of the Panjab, at Shāhbāzgarhī and Mansehra. To the same or possibly a somewhat earlier period belong Sir A. Cunningham's coins from the site of the Taxila or Takṣaśīlā, which prove the contemporaneous popular use of the Brāhma characters in Gandhāra.