Indian Palaeography c13.s1.5

c13.s1.5

We will take up the next two inscriptions together: one is from Mahasthan in the Bogra district, East Pakistan, and the other from Ramgarh in Chhattisgarh, M.P. In the latter place there are actually two inscriptions, chiselled on the rock surface, the first using *ra* and dental *sa*, and the second replacing *ra* by *la*, and dental *sa* by palatal *śa*. Except for this linguistic difference there is close similarity in the style of writing. The letter *ya* in the Ramgarh inscriptions is wedge-shaped (Fig. 5. V*a*), an angular development from the crescentic *ya* of Aśokan Brāhmī. Angularity is also marked in *pa*, *la*, *sa*, and *ha*, but this is of a different type, produced by the shorter vertical which is drawn at an angle. *Ra* has two forms, the straight vertical and the serpentine vertical; the last resembles the form seen in the Besnagar inscription of Heliodorus (Pl. V*b*). But *bha*, with notched vertical and the two separate horizontal lines for medial *o*, suggest a date not later than that of the Besnagar inscription, possibly the middle of the second century B.C. The Mahasthan inscription bears a close resemblance to the second epigraph from Ramgarh, except for the palatal *śa*, which is replaced here by dental *sa*. The form of this *sa* is very similar to that in the Dasaratha record. Both at Ramgarh (only in the second epigraph) and at Mahasthan the straight vertical (*daṇḍa*) is used as a punctuation mark. The main difference is in the forms of *ya* and *kha*. At Mahasthan alone *dha* keeps up the true shape of the Roman capital letter ‘D’, suggesting that its date is earlier than the time when the reverse variety became the common fashion. It may therefore be placed in the first half of the second century B.C.