Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c8.s2.t2.1

c8.s2.t2.1

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.