Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s3: § 8. — Origin
Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s3
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- c7.s3.2 — 4 parts
§ 8. — Origin
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⁵ B.IS. III^2, 92 ff.
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The direction of the Kharoṣṭhī from right to left made it *a priori* highly probable that its elements had been borrowed from the Semites; and the almost exact agreement of the forms for *na*, *ba*, *ra* and *va* with Aramaic signs of the transitional type induced E. THOMAS to assume a closer connection of the Kharoṣṭhī with this alphabet.⁶ His view has never been disputed; but of late it has been given a more precise form by I. TAYLOR and A. CUNNINGHAM, who assign the introduction of the Aramaic letters into India to the first Akhaemenians.⁷ The reasons which may be adduced for this opinion are as follows: — (1) The Aśoka edicts from the western Pañjāb use for "writing, edict," the word *dipi*, which evidently has been borrowed from the Old Persian, and they derive from it the verbs *dipati*, "he writes," and *dipapati*, "he causes to write;" see above, § 2, B. (2) The districts where Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions occur, especially in earlier times, are just those parts of India which probably were subject to the Persians, be it with or without interruptions, from about B. C. 500 to 331. (3) Among the Persian *sigloi*, there are some marked with single syllables in Kharoṣṭhī and Brāhmī,⁸ whence it may be inferred that they were struck in India during the Persian period, and that the Kharoṣṭhī was current during a great part of the fourth century B. C., certainly before the fall of the Persian empire in B. C. 331.
c7.s3.2.2
Some considerable variations in the Kharoṣṭhī letters of the Aśoka edicts, as well as the strongly cursive forms of several ligatures, such as *sta*, *spa*, &c. (see below, § 11, C, 2, 3), likewise point to the conclusion that the alphabet had had a long history before the middle of the third century B. C. (4) Recent discoveries in Semitic epigraphy make it extremely probable that the Aramaic, which was used already in Assyria and Babylon for official and business purposes side by side with the cuneiform writing, was very widely spread during the rule of the Akhaemenians. Numerous Aramaic inscriptions of this period have been found in Egypt, Arabia, and Asia Minor, and one even in Persia. Besides, Egypt has furnished a number of official Aramaic papyri, and Asia Minor many coins with Aramaic legends, struck by Persain satraps.⁹ In addition, there is the curious statement in the Book of Ezra, IV, 7, according to which the Samaritans sent to Artaxerxes a letter written in the *Ārāmī* script and language. Taking all these points together, there are sufficient reasons to warrant the assertion that Aramaic was commonly employed not only in the offices of the satraps, but also in the royal secretariate at Susa. The ultimate cause for the official use of the Aramaic script and language during the Akhaemenian period was, no doubt, that numerous Aramaeans held appointments as clerks, accountants, mint-masters and so forth in the Persian Civil Service.
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[21] When the Persian empire was rapidly built up on the ruins of more ancient monarchies, its rulers must have found the employment of the trained subalterns of the former governments, among whom the Aramaeans were foremost, not only convenient, but absolutely unavoidable. In these circumstances, it is but natural to assume that, after the full organisation of the administration by Darius, the Persian satraps introduced Aramaean subordinates into the Indian provinces, and thereby forced their Indian subjects, especially the clerks of the native princes and of the heads of towns and villages, to learn Aramaic. At first, the intercourse between the Persian and the Indian offices probably led to the use of the Aramaic letters for the north-western Prākrit, and later to modifications of this alphabet, which were made according to the principles of the older Indian Brāhmī,¹ and through which the Kharoṣṭhī finally arose. The adoption of the Arabic alphabet, during the middle ages and in modern times, for writing a number of Indian dialects, is somewhat analogous, as it likewise happened under foreign pressure, and as its characters were and are used either without or with modifications. (5) With these last conjectures agrees the general character of the Kharoṣṭhī, which is clearly intended for clerks and men of business; see above, § 7.
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(6) Finally, they are confirmed by the circumstance that the majority of the Kharoṣṭhī signs can be most easily derived from the Aramaic types of the fifth century B. C. which appear in the Saqqārah and Teima inscriptions of B. C. 482 and of about B. C. 500, while a few letters agree with somewhat earlier forms on the later Assyrian weights and the Babylonian seals and gems, and two or three are more closely allied to the later signs of the Lesser Teima inscription, the Stele Vaticana, and the Libation-table from the Serapeum. The whole *ductus* of the Kharoṣṭhī, with its long-drawn and long-tailed letters, is that of the characters on the Mesopotamian weights, seals and cameos, which re-occurs in the inscriptions of Saqqārah, Teima and the Serapeum. Others² have compared the writing of the Aramaic papyri from Egypt, which partly at least, like the Taurinensis, belong to the Akhaemenian period. But it does not suit so well. Many of its signs are so very cursive that they cannot be considered as the prototypes of the Kharoṣṭhī letters, and its *ductus* is that of a minute current handwriting. Some special resemblances appear to be, on a closer investigation, the results of analogous developments. Taking all these points together, the Kharoṣṭhī appears to have been elaborated in the fifth century B. C.
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⁶ P.IA. 2, 144 ff.; regarding Kharoṣṭhī legends on late coins running from left to right, see Proc. J. ASB. 1895, 83 f.
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⁷ I. TAYLOR, The Alphabet, 2, 261 f.; C.CAI. 33.
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⁸ J.RAS. 1895, 865 ff.
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⁹ CLERMONT-GANNEAU, Revue Archéologique, 1878-79; PH. BERGER, Hist. de l'Écrit. dans l'Antiquité, 214, 218 ff.
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¹ WEBER. Ind. Skizzen, 144 f.; E. THOMAS, P.IA. 2, 146; C. CAI. 33; and below, § 9, B, 4.
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² J. HALÉVY, JA. 1885, 2, 243—267, believes the Kharoṣṭhī to have been derived about B. C. 330 from 16 signs of the papyri and of a Cilician coin, and, Revue Sémitique, 1895, 372 ff., from the script of the papyri and of the *ostraka* from Egypt.