Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s15.t2.9

c7.s15.t2.9

Cols. XV, XVI, give two somewhat differing specimens of the ornamental variety of this period according to the undated inscriptions of Kuḍā (Nos. 1—6, 11, 20) and of Junnar (No. 3). Both agree in the ornamental treatment of medial *i* and *ī*. But the Kuḍā inscriptions extend it to the curves at the ends of all verticals, and show notches in the left [44] strokes of *pa* (26) and *ba* (28; compare col. VI). In col. XVI. there are two other noteworthy signs, the bipartite subscript *ya* in *yya* (40), and the *śa* with the horizontal bar in *śri* (41; compare 35, III—V). Ornamental forms, resembling those of cols. XV, XVI, are found also in the approximately datable inscriptions of Puḷumāyi in Kārle Nos. 20, 22, and of the minister of the queen of his successor Vāsiṭhīputa Sātakaṇi in Kaṇheri No. 11. The first two of these documents show a looped *ta* and a *ṇa* like that of col. XVII; the third exhibits the neat characters of Western Kṣatrapa inscriptions. It is, therefore, certain that during the 2nd century A. D. all these three varieties were used promiscuously in the western Dekhan and the Koṅkaṇ,³ and the inscriptions from the Amarāvatī Stūpa⁴ prove that they occurred also on the eastern coast of India. The contemporaneous employment of more advanced types and of more archaic ones with an admixture of more modern signs will have to be explained in this, as in other cases, by a desire to select archaic and monumental forms for epigraphic purposes and a failure to completely carry out this intention.