Indian Palaeography c11.31

c11.31

Attempts have been made in the past to show that Brāhmī was originally written from right to left and that only later was its direction changed. Bühler was the first to propound this hypothesis on the basis of a faulty coin from Eran¹ in which some letters are found to be reversed. Though many others have clearly demonstrated Bühler's mistake, Diringer once again reasserts the claim and quotes as another example the Yerragudi M.R.I. of Aśoka.¹ He concludes: 'As Mr. Sahni points out, this inscription leaves no doubt that the *boustrophedon* style was known in the time of Aśoka. There is, thus, sufficient evidence of the existence of an earlier Brāhmī script written from right to left, followed . . . as in the development of the early Greek script by a transitional system of writing in *boustrophedon* style.'² If further examples of this type prove the point, I could cite many more from Ceylon.³ But mere number is not conclusive. The argument must be based on technical analysis of the evidence. The Yerragudi inscription is a barbarous example of writing, in which the direction can hardly be said to be *boustrophedon*, and the Ceylonese inscriptions, which are all very late, betray the writers' ignorance of the true system rather than preserve an old practice. Such mistakes are found in several other inscriptions. In the Bhattiprolu inscriptions⁴ there are some letters which are similarly reversed. In one of the Chālukyan inscriptions⁵ the writing goes from below upwards. These stray examples cannot in any way change the style of the main character, which from the very beginning, when Brāhmī was created on the basis of the North Semitic writing, had determined its direction from left to right.