Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c4.45

c4.45

A cursory inspection of the alphabet used in the Southern Açoka inscriptions will satisfy any one accustomed to such enquiries, that the character from which it is derived did not comprise a sufficient number of letters, and that new signs were made by altering some of the old ones¹. This is, in itself, sufficient proof that the Indian alphabet was adapted, and not an indigenous invention. Other facts also point to an adaptation from a Semitic character. It is possible (if the Phœnician origin of the S. Açoka character be admitted) to fix the period when it must have occurred within certain, though wide, limits. The late illustrious scholar Viscount E. de Rougé has (in his masterly treatise “Mémoire sur l’origine Égyptienne de l’alphabet Phénicien”) shown that the Phœnician alphabet was derived from Egyptian signs about the 19th century B. C.² Another not less eminent Egyptologist has shown that the tribute brought to Thothmes III. (17th century) proves that the Phœnicians had then commercial intercourse with India³. About the 17th century B. C. is, then, the earliest period at which it is possible to fix the introduction of the alphabet into India. But, again, though the changes in the Phœnician alphabet were, so far as is now known, of a very slight character even during several centuries, it is yet possible, even with the scanty information available, to trace some progress in development, and it is evident⁴ that the source of the S. Açoka character must rather be sought in the forms current in Phœnicia in or about the 5th century B. C. or even later than in the earlier forms. The N. alphabet is, on the contrary, nearer to the older forms, but it in no way concerns the people of S. India. Thus all known facts tend to prove that the earliest date of the introduction of the Phœnician alphabet into India in what became the S. Açoka character, cannot have been earlier than 500 B. C. and was probably not earlier than 400 B. C. At present, all available information points to a Phœnician-Aramaic origin of the Indian alphabets, but the information is too scanty to justify a more precise inference. Writing was, certainly, little used in India before 250 B. C.