Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c5.10

c5.10

In the S. Açoka inscriptions we find a system of writing precisely similar to that used in later and even the present times, and, as it cannot be of foreign (Semitic¹) but must be of Indian origin, it is necessary to remark that the way of writing consonants which follow one another immediately without the intervention of a vowel occurs already in these inscriptions. Thus we find **dv**, **pt**, **mh**, **rv**, **vy**, **st**, **sth** and **sv** in the Girnar edict, and the letters are placed above one another just as is done now. In the Rūpnāth edict **vy**, occurs. The usage was therefore already general in the 3rd century B. C. Prakrit inscriptions in the Caves show few traces (*e. g.* **st**) of this way of writing², but the Sanskrit inscriptions of the same period furnish many examples. In the Prakrit inscriptions a consonant (as Profr. Kern has shown) is sometimes doubled by a dot before it³.