Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c6.s3.2

c6.s3.2

The results of a paleographic examination of the most ancient Indian inscriptions fully agree with the literary evidence, which bears witness to the widely spread use of writing during the fifth century B. C. and perhaps even during the sixth. The characters of the Aśoka edicts, which have to be considered first, prove very clearly that writing was no recent invention in the third century B. C. The alphabet of the edicts is not homogeneous. All the letters, with the exception of *U*, *jha*, *ña*, *na*, *ṭha*, *ṇa*, *tha* and *na*, have several often very dissimilar forms, which are partly local and partly cursive varieties. The number of the variants of one letter sometimes amounts to nine or ten. Thus plate II, 1, 2, cols. II—XII, shows for *A*, *Ā*, no less than ten forms, among which the eight most important ones may be placed here side by side: —