Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c6.s3.11

c6.s3.11

Four among these signs, Nos. 2, 7, 10, 21, are, as will appear further on,⁴ really archaic, but the remainder are partly secondary, partly tertiary cursive forms. To the last-mentioned belong in particular Nos. 4, 8, 11, 15 and 19. **[8]** Among the letters from the later inscriptions in line *B*, Nos. 9, 11, 12 and 19 appear in the Nāgārjunī cave inscriptions of Aśoka's grandson Daśaratha; Nos. 2, 6—8, 10, 13—16 and 21 in Khāravela's Hāthigumphā inscription and in the oldest Andhra inscriptions, Nāsik No. 1 and Nānāghāt, as well as in the archaic Mathurā inscriptions, all of which documents belong to the period between about B. C. 170 and 150. Nos. 1, 3 and 22 are still later, and occur first in the inscriptions of the Kuṣaṇas from Mathurā and in the Andhra and Ābhīra inscriptions from Nāsik of the first and second centuries A. D. Occasionally the Aśoka edicts show also the short top-stroke, the so-called *Serif*, which is so characteristic for the later alphabets and causes numerous modifications.⁵ Very commonly, too, appear the upward strokes for medial *ā* and *e*, the cursive rounded *i* (in Girnār sometimes not distinguishable from *ā*), more rarely the later straight *o*-stroke, and once a looped *o*.⁶ Finally, the Anusvāra sometimes stands, as is generally the case in later times, above the letter after which it is pronounced.⁷