Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c6.s2.t2.16

c6.s2.t2.16

These very plain statements of the Ceylonese canon refer certainly to the actualities of the period between B. C. 500—400, possibly even of the sixth century.¹² Their antiquity is proved also by the fact that all the terms for writing, letters, writers, — *chindati*, *likhati*, *lekha*, *lekhaka*, *akkhara*, — as well as nearly all the writing materials, wood or bamboo, *paṇṇa* or leaves, and *suvaṇṇapaṭṭa* or gold plates, point to the oldest method of writing, the incision of the signs in hard materials. All traces of the use of ink are wanting, though the statements of Nearchos and Q. Curtius regarding the writing materials used at the time of Alexander's invasion (see below under C) make it very probable that ink was known in the fourth century B. C., and though an ink-inscription of the third or second century B. C. is found on the inner side of the lid of the relic vessel from Stūpa No. III. at Andher.¹³ Moreover, the Ceylonese books are not acquainted with the words *lipi*, *libi*, *dipi*, *dipati*, *dipapati*, *lipikara* and *libikara* for "writing," "to write," and "writer," of which the first six are found in the **[6]** Aśoka edicts and the last two, as stated above, in Pāṇini's grammar. *Dipi* and *lipi* are probably derived from the Old Persian *dipi*, which cannot have reached India before the conquest of the Pañjāb by Darius about B. C. 500, and which later became *lipi*.¹⁴