On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c8.12

c8.12

In support of these conjectural combinations three further points may be adduced. First, the Kharoṣṭhī alphabet is not a Pandit's, but a clerk's, alphabet. This appears to me evident from the cursive appearance of the signs, which has been frequently noticed by others, from its (according to Indian views) imperfect vowel-system, which includes no long vowels, from the employment of the Anusvāra for the notation of all nasals before consonants and from the almost constant substitution of single consonants for double ones. The expression of all long vowels by separate signs, which occurs in no other ancient alphabet but the Brāhmī lipi, was no doubt natural and desirable for the phoneticists or grammarians, who developed that alphabet.¹ But it is a useless encumbrance for men of business, whose aim is rather the expeditious despatch of work than philological or phonetic accuracy. Hence, even the Indian clerks and men of business using the Brāhmī, have never paid much attention to their correct use, though they were instructed by Brahmans in the principles of their peculiar alphabet.² If, therefore, these signs, which have only a value for schoolmen, do not occur in the Kharoṣṭhī, the natural inference is that this alphabet was framed by persons who paid regard only to the requirements of ordinary life. The other two peculiarities mentioned, the substitution of the Anusvāra for all nasals, standing before consonants, and the substitution of *ka* for *kka*, of *ta* for *tta* and so forth and of *kha* for *kkha*, of *dha* for *ddha* and so forth, are clearly the devices of clerks, who wished to get quickly through their work. If thus the Kharoṣṭhī appears to be an alphabet, framed with particular regard to the wants of clerks, that agrees with and confirms the assumption, put forward above, according to which it arose out of the official intercourse between the scribes of the Satraps and those of the native chiefs or other authorities.