Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c8.s2.t2.9

c8.s2.t2.9

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.