On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c8.4

c8.4

Sir A. Cunningham's remarks refer to the first point which requires consideration in all questions of this kind, viz. the true character of the script, the origin of which is to be determined. He has emphatically recalled to the memory of the palaeographists that the Kharoṣṭhī is an Indian alphabet, and by an ingenious utilisation of his finds of ancient coins in the ruins of Taxila he has shown that the Kharoṣṭhī held always, during the whole period for which epigraphic evidence is available, only a secondary position by the side of the Brāhma alphabet even in Northwestern India. It is rather curious that the reminder regarding the essentially Indian character of the alphabet should have been necessary, as even a superficial considera- [45] tion of its letters teaches that lesson. Its full system of palatals and linguals cannot be designed for any other language than Sanskrit or an ancient Prakrit, the only forms of speech which possess five sounds of each of the two classes mentioned. If this has been sometimes forgotten and even Bactria has been considered as the cradle of the Kharoṣṭhī, the cause is no doubt the loose way in which it used to be called the "Bactrian, Bactro-Pali or Indo-Bactrian" alphabet, which appellations are due to its occurrence on the coins of Greek kings, who, originally ruling over Bactria, conquered portions of Northwestern India. Sir A. Cunningham very properly points out, op. cit., p. 35, that not a single Kharoṣṭhī inscription has been found north of the Hindu Kush and that in Bactria a different alphabet seems to have been used. He further proposes to substitute for "Indo-Bactrian" the Indian term "Gandharian", which would have been suitable in every way, if in the mean time the old Indian name had not been found. The districts, in which the largest number of Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions have been found, are situated roughly speaking between 69º—73º, 30′ E. L. and 33º—35º N. L., while single inscriptions have turned up southwest near Multan, south at Mathurā and east at Kangra, and single letters or single words even at Bharahut, in Ujjain and in Maisur. This tract, to which the Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions of the third century B. C. are exclusively confined, corresponds to the Gandhāra country of ancient India, the chief towns of which were Puṣkalāvatī-Hashtnagar to the west of the Indus and Taxila or Shah Deri to the east of the river. And it is here, of course, that the Kharoṣṭhī alphabet must have originated.