Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s2.1

c7.s2.1

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.