Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c8.s3.t1.7

c8.s3.t1.7

During this period, the characters of the western and eastern documents do not differ much. The alphabet of the Sālaṅkāyana plates⁸ agrees very closely with that of plate VII, col. XIII; and in the first half of the 7th century the letters of the Calukya inscriptions from Vātāpi and from Veṅgi show an almost perfect resemblance.¹ But the more considerable differences between cols. XII. and XIII, which both are derived from grants of the Kadamba Mṛgeśavarman issued within a period of only five years, have to be explained by the assumption that the letters of col. XIII, with which nearly all the other Kadamba inscriptions agree, imitate writing with ink, and those of col. XII. writing with the *stilus*. This explanation is suggested by the thinness of the signs of col. XII, and by the much greater thickness of those in col. XIII, and by the wedges and solid squares at their heads (compare above, § 28, B).