Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s3.2.4

c7.s3.2.4

(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.