On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c8.11

c8.11

Under these circumstances it appears natural to assume that the Persian Satraps carried with them also into India their staff of [49] subordinates, who were accustomed to the use of the Aramaean letters and language. And this would fully explain, how the Hindus of the Indo-Persian provinces were driven to utilise the characters, commonly employed by the scribes and accountants of their conquerors, though they already possessed a script of their own. The Kharoṣṭhī alphabet would appear to be the result of the intercourse between the offices of the Satraps and of the native authorities, the Indian chiefs and the heads of towns and villages, whom, as the accounts of the state of the Panjab at the time of Alexander's invasion show, the Persians left in possession in consideration of the payment of their tribute. The Hindus probably used at first the pure Aramaic characters, just as in much later times they adopted the Arabic writing for a number of their dialects, and they introduced in the course of time the modifications, observable in the Kharoṣṭhī alphabet, for which process the additions to the Arabic alphabet, employed for writing Hindī, furnish an analogy, perhaps not perfect but nevertheless worthy of notice.