Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c8.s2.t2: B. — The script of Central India
Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c8.s2.t2
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B. — The script of Central India
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The Central-Indian script is found fully developed in the inscriptions of Samudragupta at Eraṇ and of Candragupta II. at Udayagiri,⁶ on the copper-plates of the kings of Śarabhapura,⁷ of the Vākāṭakas,⁸ and of Tīvara king of Kosala,⁹ and in two early Kadamba inscriptions.¹⁰ In all these documents, the heads of the letters bear small squares, which are either hollow (plate VII, col. XI) or filled in (plate VII, col. X). These squares, to which on account of their resemblances to small boxes the script owes the name "box-headed," are, like the wedges, artificial developments of the *Serifs*. The solid, filled in, squares probably have been invented by writers who [63] used ink, and the hollow ones by persons writing with a *stilus*, who feared to tear their palm-leaves. Both varieties of "box-heads" occur occasionally or constantly in other districts and in connection with other alphabets (see, *e. g.*, the Valabhī inscription of plate VII, col. V, the archaic Kadamba inscription of plate VII, col. XII, the Pallava inscription of plate VII, col. XX), and even in Nos. 21 and 21, A, of the Campā inscriptions from Further India.¹ But the very peculiar appearance of the Central-Indian inscriptions of this class is due to the more or less rigorous modification of the letters by the contraction of their breadth and the conversion of all curves into angular strokes. This is best visible in the grants, figured in EI. 3, 260, and in Fleet's Gupta Inscriptions (CII. 3), Nos. 40, 41, 56, 81, plates 26, 27, 35, 45, among which No. 56 is represented in col. XI. of our plate VII, while col. X. offers the less carefully modified characters of F.GI (CII. 3), No. 55, plate 34. Both these inscriptions were issued in the same year from the *Dharmādhikaraṇa* of the Vākāṭaka king Pravarasena II.
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⁵ See also my remarks in *IA.* 7, 110, and below, § 28, B.
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⁶ *F.GI* (*CII.* 3), Nos. 2, 3, pl. 2, A, B.
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⁷ *Op. cit.*, Nos. 40, 41, plates 26, 27.
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⁸ *Op. cit.*, Nos. 53—55, plates 33, A, to 35; *IA.* 12, 239; *B.ASRWI.* 4, pl. 56, No. 4; pl. 57, No. 3; *EI.* 3, 260; the earliest of them belong in BHAGVANLAL INDRAJI'S and my opinion to the 5th, according to FLEET to the 7th, century.
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⁹ *F.GI* (*CII.* 3), No. 81, pl. 45; according to FLEET from the 8th or 9th century; according to KIELHORN, *EI.* 4, 258, undoubtedly from the 8th.
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¹⁰ See FLEET, *IA.* 21, 93: of the same type is, according to an impression presented to me by L. RICE, the Tāḷgund (Sthānakundūra) Praśasti of Kubja from the reign of Śāntivarman, *Ep. Carn.* 7, Sk. 176 (*EI.* 8).
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¹ Bergaigne-Barth, Inscriptions Sanskrit du Campā et du Cambodge, 2, 23; the Campā inscriptions show the northern *ka* and *ra* without curves at the end.
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Traces of the influence of the northern alphabets are visible in this script just as in the western variety, and particularly in the letters *ta*, *dha*, *na*, and in the Mātrās of medial *e*, *ai* and *o*, which in F.GI (CII. 3), No. 81, plate 45 (not in our plate), shew the peculiar tailed northern form of the 7th and 8th centuries. But in the ligatures (see, for instance, *nta*, plate VII, 43, X), we meet repeatedly with the looped *ta* and with the *na* without the loop, and even an independent looped *ta* appears exceptionally² in the word *snātānām* (No. 55, line 7; No. 56, line 6). Medial *au* has the tripartite western and northern form in F.GI (CII. 3), Nos. 2, 3, 40, 81, plates 2, A, B, 26, 45, but the southern bipartite form (see *dau*, plate VII, 24, XI) in the Vākāṭaka inscriptions. The *kha*, which has a big hook and small loop, and the oblong *ca* with the vertical on the right, likewise agree with the southern forms. But F.GI (CII. 3), No. 2, line 17, offers once, in *śulkā*, the northern *ka* without the curve at the foot.
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² Fleet and Kielhorn assume that the writers by mistake put *na* for *ta* and *vice versâ*.
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The other letters of this script frequently show greater or smaller variations. Our plate offers a few in the case of *A*, *ja*, *tha*, *ba* and *la*. More have been pointed out by Fleet and Kielhorn in their editions of the inscriptions in F.GI (CII. 3) and in EI. 3. I may add to Fleet's remarks, that his Nos. 40, 41, and 81 have the angular form of *ma* of the later Kanarese-Telugu alphabet (see below, § 29, B, 6).