Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c8.s4.3

c8.s4.3

The signs of these documents resemble, up to the Gāṅgeya year 183, partly the letters of the Central-Indian script (above, § 28, B) and partly those of the western variety, which exhibits the medial *au*, of the Ajaṇṭā inscriptions (above, § 28, A), and they show only a few peculiar forms. A specimen of the Kaliṅga script of the latter kind has been given in plate VII, col. XIX, from the Chicacole grant of the Gāṅgeya year 148, in which only the Grantha-like *A* (2, XIX), and the *ga* (10, XIX) and *śa* (36, XIX) with curves on the left, differ greatly from the corresponding Valabhī letters. The alphabet of the Acyutapuram plates³ of the Gāṅgeya year 87, which exhibits angular forms with solid box-heads, closely resembles the Central-Indian writing; but its *na* is identical with that of the modern Nāgarī. The Chicacole plates⁴ of the Gāṅgeya year 128 show in general the same type; but they offer the ordinary looped *na* of the north and west, and the looped *ta* of the archaic Grantha (22, XX, ff.). Finally, the Chicacole plates⁵ of the Gāṅgeya year 183 come close to the script of plate VII, col. X; but their *na* is again that of the late Nāgarī, and their medial *ā* mostly stands above the line, as in various northern and also Grantha documents of the 7th and 8th centuries.