On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c7.s2.10

c7.s2.10

The last case of mutilation, I believe, occurs in the Anusvāra (No 13, Col. VI, b) which is represented by a simple dot. This is no doubt a substitute for the small circle (Col. VI, a), which reappears very commonly in certain later epigraphic and literary alphabets. I consider the circle to be a mutilated minute *ma*, the upper angle of which was omitted,² and I believe that this conjecture is supported by the following facts. In the Edicts and all other ancient inscriptions the Anusvāra is placed rarely at the top of the letter after which it is pronounced. Usually and regularly it stands opposite the middle, but in a number of cases it is found also to the right of the foot. Now vowelless consonants always stand at the foot of the preceding sign in the oldest Sanskrit or Mixed inscriptions from the times of the [72] Kuṣana kings down to the fifth century A. D., when the *Virāma* makes first its appearance. Moreover all such vowelless consonants are made exceedingly small, even after the invention of the *Virāma*, and they are very commonly mutilated at the top.¹ These facts would fully explain the use of a small circle for a vowelless *ma* of the Aśoka type, which then became the general sign of nasalisation in the Brāhma alphabet, just as the Kharoṣṭhī *ma* was turned into the Kharoṣṭhī Anusvāra. My theory, of course, rests on the assumption that the Brāhma alphabet was used from the beginning, not for Prakrit, but for Sanskrit, and this is made more than probable by the occurrence of *ṅa* in the Mahābodhi Gayā alphabet of the masons, as well as by the arrangement of its letters on phonetic principles, see above p. 33, likewise by the numerous indications that the alphabet was elaborated by phoneticists or grammarians, * in which *O*,¹ No 6, Col. VI, f—g, has been formed out of *U*, and in the first sign (Col. VI, f), the stroke stands in its [73] original position, because the letter (Jaugaḍa form) has not been turned round. The *AI* (No 16, Col. VI, b, upper row) appears to have been derived from *E* in the same manner, but the letter has been turned from the right to the left. The sounds *u* and *o*, as well as *e* and *ai*, appear to a Hindu and to a Sanskritist closely connected, because in numberless cases *o* is the *Guṇa* or representative of *u* in strong forms, and because *e* and *ai* both appear in the strong forms of roots with *i* and in derivatives from nouns with *i* and *e*. These phonetic or grammatical affinities no doubt influenced the formation of the signs.