Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s18.9

c7.s18.9

The characters of Aṃśuvarman's inscription of A. D. 635 (plate IV, col. XVII) and of the nearly contemporaneous Aphsaḍ Praśasti of Ādityasena (plate IV, cols. XVIII, XIX) show the further progress of the acute-angled alphabet during the 7th century. It must, however, be noted that Aṃśuvarman's inscriptions and other Nepalese documents of the same time have the round *ṣa* and thus are allied with the eastern Gupta character, while the Aphsaḍ Praśasti and its allies from India proper are connected with the western variety of the old northern alphabet.¹ FLEET calls this second variety, on account of the more marked twist of the lower ends of the strokes, "the Kuṭila variety of the Magadha alphabet of the 7th century."² I feel disinclined to adopt the term "**Kuṭila**," which was first used by PRINSEP,³ and since has been employed by many other writers, because it is based on an erroneous rendering of the expression *kuṭila akṣara* in the Deval Praśasti.⁴ I would remove it from the paleographic terminology. KIELHORN likewise avoids it in his paleographic remarks on various inscriptions of this period.⁵