Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c4.3

c4.3

Nearchus (B. C. 325) expressly states that the Brahman laws were *not written*[^2). Megasthenes a few years later (c. 302 B. C.), mentions that they had no written books, and that they did not know letters (grammata)[^3) or use seals, but he also mentions milestones at a distance of ten stadia from one another, "indicating the bye-roads and intervals"[^4). It is difficult, though not impossible, to suppose that these indications were made by the stones merely, and that there were not any marks on them to tell more than