Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s2: § 7. — Use and characteristics
Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s2
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§ 7. — Use and characteristics
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In its form, known to us at present, the Kharoṣṭhī is an ephemeral, chiefly epigraphic, alphabet of North-Western India. The majority of the inscriptions written in Kharoṣṭhī have been found between 69°—73° 30′ E. Long. and 33°—35° N. Lat., in the ancient province of Gandhāra, the modern eastern Afghanistan and the northern Pañjāb; and the oldest documents are confined to the districts the capitals of which were Taxila (Shāh-Derī) to the east of the Indus, and Puṣkalāvatī or Carsādā (Hashtnagar) to the west of the river. Single inscriptions have turned up further south-west in Bhāwalpur near Multān, south in Mathurā, and south-east in Kāngrā, and single words or letters in Bharahut, Ujjain and Maisūr (Siddāpura Aśoka edicts).⁴ Coins, cameos and MSS. with Kharoṣṭhī characters have been carried much further north and north-east. The period during which, according to the documentary evidence at present available, the Kharoṣṭhī seems to have been used in India, extends from the fourth century B. C. to about the third century A. D., the earliest letters occurring on the Persian *sigloi* (§ 8) and the latest perhaps on the Gandhāra sculptures and the Kuṣana inscriptions.⁵ As the note in the Fawanshulin of A. D. 668 (see above, § 1) shows, the Buddhists preserved a knowledge of the existence of the alphabet much longer.
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⁴ B.IS. III², 47—53; C.ASR. 2, 82 ff., pl. 59, 63; 5, 1 ff., pl. 16, 28; W.AA. 55 ff.; C.CAI. 31 f.
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⁵ B.IS. III², loc. cit.; the question of the lower limit of the use of the Kharoṣṭhī is difficult on account of the uncertainty regarding the dates of Kaniṣka and his two successors, all of whom S. LÉVI now places in the first cent. A. D.(JA. 1897, 1, 1 ff.). The limit given above is based on the assumption that Kaniṣka’s dates refer to the Saka era or to the fourth cent. of the Seleucidan era. I still make use of it, not because I consider it to be unassailable, but for the reasons stated in WZKM. 1, 169. The letters in the inscriptions of Saṁvat 200 and 276 or 286 (Hashtnagar image) look more ancient than those of the Kuṣana inscriptions. According to a communication from Dr. Th. Bloch, Prof. Hoernle has read dates of the fourth cent. of the same unknown Saṁvat on recently found Gandhāra sculptures.
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Hitherto, the Kharoṣṭhī has been found (1) in stone-inscriptions, (2) on metal plates and vases, (3) on coins, (4) on cameos, and (5) on a longer known small piece of birch bark from a Stūpa in Afghanistan⁶ and on the Bhūrja MS. of the Dhammapada from Khotan. The latter MS. has probably been written in Gandhāra during the Kuṣana period. The dialect of its text shows characteristic affinities to that of the Shāhbāzgarhī version of the Aśoka edicts, and its characters agree very closely with those of the Wardak vase.¹ On the metal plates and vases, [20] the letters frequently consist of rows of dots, or have been first punched in in this manner and afterwards scratched in with a stilus.² On stone vases they are sometimes written with ink.³
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⁶ W.AA. pl. 3 at p. 54, No. 11; similar twists have been found in other Stūpas, see op. cit. 60, 84, 94, 105; but the fragments in the British Museum, said to belong to them, show no letters.
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¹ See S. v. OLDENBURG, Predvaritelnaë zamjetkao Buddhiiskoi rukopisi, napisannoi pismenami Kharoṣṭhī, St. Petersburg, 1897, and SENART, Acad. des Inscr's., Comptes rendus, 1897, 251 ff.
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² IA. 10, 325.
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³ W.AA. 111.
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' In spite of its frequent utilisation for epigraphic documents, the Kharoṣṭhī is a popular script, destined for clerks and men of business. This is proved by the throughout highly cursive character of the letters, by the absence of long vowels, which are useless for the purposes of common daily life, by the expression of groups of unaspirated double consonants by single ones (*ka* for *kka*) and of unaspirated and aspirated ones by the latter alone (*kha* for *kkha*), and by the invariable use of the Anusvāra for all vowelless medial nasals.⁴ The discovery of the Khotan MS. makes it very improbable that there existed another form of the script which, being more similar to the Brāhmī in completeness, would have been more suitable for the Brahmanical Sāstras.
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⁴ B.IS. III^2, 97 f.
Linked texts (2)
- Dhammapada — Pāli
- Kangra