On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c8.75

c8.75

¹ But compare now the interesting article of Professor A. Ludwig in the Gurupūjākaumudī p. 68. Professor A. Ludwig takes *kharoṭṭha* to be the original form of the name and *kharoṣṭha* a false transliteration into Sanskrit. And he considers *kharoṭṭha* to be the Indian representative of a possible, though not actually found, Aramaic *harūtthā* חרותתא "engraving, writing". In favour of Professor A. Ludwig's view that *kharoṣṭha* may be due to the false transliteration of a foreign word it may urged that its derivative *kharoṣṭhī*, more usually spelt *kharoṣṭī* and even *kharostī* or *kharostrī* (Mahāvastu p. 135, l. 5), occurs only in Northern Buddhist texts and that these are full of similar blunders in the conversion of Pali words into Sanskrit. If the actual and frequent occurrence of *harūtthā* should be proved hereafter, I should be quite ready to give up my conjecture in favour of his. Regarding other derivations of the name Kharoṣṭha see, A. Weber, Indische Streifen, vol. III, p. 8 f.