Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s9: § 14. — Common characteristics of the ancient inscriptions

Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c7.s9

Language: English

§ 14. — Common characteristics of the ancient inscriptions

c7.s9.1

The forms of the Brāhmī and Drāviḍī, used during the first 600 years, are known at present only from inscriptions on stones, copper-plates, coins, seals and rings,¹ and there is only one instance of the use of ink from the third or second century B. C.² The view of the development of the characters during this period is, therefore, not complete. For, in accordance with the results of all paleographic research, the epigraphic alphabets are mostly more archaic than those used in daily life, as the very natural desire to employ monumental forms prevents the adoption of modern letters, and as, in the case of coins, the imitation of older specimens not rarely makes the alphabet retrograde. The occurrence of numerous cursive forms together with very archaic ones, both in the Aśoka edicts (see above, § 3) and also in later inscriptions, cléarly proves³ that Indian writing makes no exception to the general rule. And it will be possible to use the numerous cursive letters for the reconstruction of the more advanced alphabets, which were employed for manuscripts and for business purposes.

c7.s9.2

¹ J.BBRAS. 10, XXIII.

c7.s9.3

² See above, § 2, B (end).

c7.s9.4

³ B.IS. III², 40—43.

c7.s9.5

The full recognition of the actual condition of the Indian writing is obscured also by the fact that the inscriptions of the earliest period, with two exceptions, are either in Prākrit or in a mixed language (Gāthā dialect), and that the originals, from which they were transferred to stone or copper, were drafted by clerks and monks who possessed little or no education. In [31] writing Prākrit these persons adopted nearly throughout — (in writing the mixed dialect less constantly) — the practically convenient popular orthography, in which the notation of long vowels, especially of *ī* and *ū*, and of the Anusvāra, is occasionally neglected as a matter of small importance, and in which double consonants are mostly represented by single ones, non-aspirates are omitted before aspirates, and the Anusvāra is put for all vowelless medial nasals.⁴ This mode of spelling continues in the Prākrit inscriptions with great constancy until the second century A. D. The constant doubling of the consonants appears first in a Pāli inscription of *Hāritīputta Sātakaṇṇi*, king of Banavāsī, which has been recently found by L. RICE.⁵ The longer known inscription of the same prince (IA. 14, 331) does not show it. Besides, we find in some other, partly much older, Prākrit documents, faint traces of the phonetical and grammatical spelling of the Paṇḍits. Thus, the Aśoka edicts of Shāhbāzgarhī offer some instances of *mma* (see above, § 9, B, 4), the Nāsik inscriptions Nos. 14, 15, and Kuḍā No. 5, have the word *siddha*, and Kaṇheri No. 14 *āyyakena*.⁶ Such deviations from the rule indicate that the writers had learned a little Sanskrit, which fact is proved also for the writer who drafted the Kālsī edicts by the, for the Pāli absurd, form *baṃhmane* for *baṃbhane* (Kālsī edict XIII, l. 39).

c7.s9.6

⁴ See above, § 7.

c7.s9.7

⁵ According to an impression and a photograph kindly sent by MR. L. RICE.

c7.s9.8

⁶ B.ASRWI. 4, pl. 45 and 52; 5, pl. 51.

c7.s9.9

With the exception of the Ghasuṇḍī (Nagarī) inscription, which contains no word with a double consonant, all the documents in the mixed dialect offer instances of double consonants which sometimes even are not absolutely necessary. Pabhosa No. 1 has *Bahasatimittrasa* and *Kaśśapīyānaṃ*, No. 2 has *Tevaṇīputtrasya*, Nāsik No. 5 has *siddham*, and Kārle No. 21 has *Setapharaṇaputtasya*.⁷ And the Jaina inscriptions from Mathurā furnish numerous analogous cases.⁸ The only known Sanskrit inscriptions of this period, the Girnār Praśasti from the reign of Rudradāman and Kaṇheri No. 11,⁹ in general show the orthography approved by the phonologists and grammarians, with a few irregularities in the use of the Anusvāra, *e. g.*, *pratānaṃ ā* (Girnār Praśasti, l. 2), *saṃbaṃdhā°* (l. 12), which have been caused by the influence of the popular orthography, but are found in the best MSS. written by Paṇḍits. The orthographic peculiarities, just discussed, have therefore nothing to do with the development of the alphabet, but merely show that in ancient, as in modern, India the spelling of the clerks differed from that of the learned Brahmans, and that both methods, then as now, mutually influenced each other and caused irregularities.

c7.s9.10

⁷ EI. 242; B.ASRWI. 4, pl. 52 and 54.

c7.s9.11

⁸ EI. 1, 371 ff.; 2, 195 ff.

c7.s9.12

⁹ B.ASRWI. 2, pl. 14; 5, pl. 51.

c7.s9.13

A second peculiarity,¹ found in many inscriptions in Prākrit and in the mixed dialect, is the frequent erroneous employment of the signs for the sibilants. In the Aśoka edicts of Kālsī, of Siddāpura, and of Bairāt No. II,² on the Bhaṭṭiprolu vases, in the cave inscriptions of Nāgārjunī and of Rāmnāth,³ and in the Mathurā inscriptions of the Kuṣana period, nay even in the two oldest Ceylonese inscriptions, *ṣa* or *śa* are used often for *sa*, and *śa* for *ṣa*, and *sa* for *śa* and *ṣa*. The reasons for this promiscuous use of the sibilants are, first, the circumstance that the school alphabet, which the clerks learned, was originally intended for Sanskrit and contained more sibilants than the ancient vernaculars possessed, and secondly, the negligent pronunciation of the classes destitute of grammatical training. The western and southern Prākrits very probably possessed, then as now, both the palatal and the dental sibilants, and it was probably the custom, as is done also in our days, to exchange the two sounds in the same words. The natural consequence was that the feeling for the real value of the signs for *śa* and *sa* disappeared among the Prākrit-speaking classes, while the *ṣa* of their school-alphabet, for which there was no corresponding sound in their vernaculars, must have appealed to them as a sign suitable to express sibilance. The Sanskrit inscriptions of all centuries, especially the land-grants which were drafted by common clerks, the MSS. of works written in the modern Prākrits, and the documents from [32] the offices of modern India, with their countless mistakes in the use of the sibilants, offer abundant proof for the correctness of this explanation of the errors in the old inscriptions. The explanation is also confirmed by the occasional occurrence of *ṇa*⁴ for *na*, — once in the separate edicts of Dhauli and once of Jaugada, — though *na* alone is permissible for their dialect. In these cases, too, the error seems to have been caused by the fact that the school-alphabet contained both *ṇa* and *na*. The clerks, who had learned it, each made once a slip, and put in the, for them, redundant sign. The different opinion,⁵ according to which the exchange of the sibilants in the Aśoka edicts indicates that the values of the Brāhma signs were not completely settled in the third century B. C., rests on the, now untenable, assumption that the Brāhmī was elaborated, not for writing Sanskrit, but for the Prākrit dialects.

Linked texts (1)

Kanheri Inscription (No. 15) — Sanskrit