Indian Palaeography c15.2

c15.2

THE older palaeographers, such as Burgess, Fleet, Burnell, Bühler and others, have written of ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ alphabets from about A.D. 350. Bühler¹ notes nine important ‘common’ characteristics of the northern and five of the southern alphabets. These ‘common’ features are limited neither to the north nor to the south, and they are not coextensive with these two geographical divisions. The presence of the southern character in Malwa, north of the Vindhyas, and of the proto-Nāgarī script in the Rāshtrakūṭa records, south of the Vindhyas, has long been known. Similarly, the style of writing seen in the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudra Gupta is not found throughout North India, nor can we choose any particular style in the Peninsula and call it southern. On the other hand, this division leaves entirely out of account a most important group of inscriptions, which show a square head-mark (Pl. XV) and are confined to the Deccan and Eastern Malwa. The fundamental changes that were then going on in Gujarat and Kathiawad, a region which in the earlier period was closely associated with the southern characters, also remain unexplained. If these broad geographical divisions are set aside, it is not difficult to see the evolution of the characters from the writing styles traced in the last chapter. These styles tended to become localized and affiliated to the various cultural regions in the subcontinent. These regional styles might have differentiated still further but for two important factors which were instrumental in establishing a link between them and also in governing a uniform pattern in their development. The first was the use of a common language, Sanskrit, which helped in the easy movement of literates and scribes from one region to another and the quick dispersal of technical skill or styles of writing. The second was the growth of larger kingdoms, which by their very nature had to adopt a uniform style of writing within their jurisdiction. It is on such assumptions that we can understand how the Kauśāmbī style of writing of the second and third century A.D. gradually spread throughout the Middle Ganges Valley and as far east as Bengal after it was adopted by the early Guptas; but later, in the sixth and seventh century A.D., as a result of the growth of the power of Kanauj, this style was ousted and replaced by another style that spread from the western region. Such political changes retarded the growth of regional cultures and they had their effect on the style of writing as well. With the growth of 'national' (in the sense of regional) states in the subsequent period the regional scripts also emerged fully. They grew out of the differences noticed in the period ending roughly in the eighth century A.D. These different styles are termed here proto-regional scripts, as they can be best understood on the basis of regional cultures rather than of wide geographical divisions.