Indian Palaeography c15.s1.10

c15.s1.10

A II. *Eastern India.* This region properly includes Bengal, Assam and Orissa, but Orissa was already linked with the Middle Ganges Valley. Assam had no separate script of its own. The late inscriptions found there followed the style of Bengal. With Bengal is grouped Nepal, as the writing style of both these regions is derived from the Middle Ganges Valley and there are many remarkable links between the scripts of these two areas. Each of these will be treated as a sub-class—II (a) Bengal and II (b) Nepal. With the rise in the eighth century a.d. of the Pālas, who ruled over the delta as well as part of the Middle Ganges Valley, the regional style was modified under extraneous influences. The growth of proto-Bengali did not take place here until two centuries later. But certain tendencies that originated in this period led on to the growth of the later regional script.