Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c6.s1.16

c6.s1.16

Besides the *brāhmī* or *bambhī*, which is the parent of all the still existing alphabets of India, two more can be identified with known scripts. The *kharoṣṭhī* or *kharoṭṭhī* is, as the Fawan-shulin states,¹ the writing running from the right to the left, invented by one Kharoṣṭha, "Ass-lip,"² and is the same character which European scholars formerly used to call Bactrian, Indo-Bactrian, Bactro-Pali, Ariano-Pali, &c. The *drāviḍī* or *dāmilī* of the lists is very [2] probably the partly independent variety of the Brāhmī, which recently has become known through the relic vessels from the Stūpa of Bhaṭṭiprolu in the Kistna district.³ Besides, the name *puṣkarasārī* or *pukkharasāriyā* is certainly historical, as it is evidently connected with the *nomen gentile* *Puṣkarasādi* or *Pauṣkarasādi* (with the Northern Buddhists *Puṣkarasāri*) by which one or several ancient teachers of law and grammar are mentioned in Pāṇini's grammar, Āpastamba's Dharmasūtra, and other works. It appears not incredible that a member of the family of Puṣkarasad may have invented a new alphabet or modified an existing one. The list of the Jainas includes also the name *yavaṇāliyā* or *yavaṇāṇiyā*, which is identical with *yavanānī*, "the writing of the Yavanas or Greeks," of Pāṇini (traditional date about B. C. 350).⁴ An early acquaintance of the Hindus with the Greek alphabet may have been brought about by the expedition of Skylax to North-Western India in B. C. 509, or by the fact that Indian and Gandharan troops took part in Xerxes' war against Greece,⁵ and even by an ancient commercial intercourse. At all events, finds of Indian imitations of Attic drachmes with Greek inscriptions tend to prove the use of the Greek alphabet in North-Western India before the time of Alexander.⁶