Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s3.2.3

c7.s3.2.3

[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.