Indian Palaeography c15.s1.20

c15.s1.20

This division agrees almost entirely with what we learn from the account given by Alberuni,¹ provided we bear in mind that he describes conditions obtaining two centuries later. Out of the eleven scripts mentioned by him three, viz. Ardhanāgarī, Malwārī, and Saindhava, which were current in Bhatiya and Sindh, are hardly known to us, as no record from this region has so far been published. Three inscribed potsherds, which were recently discovered in the Bhambhor excavation in Sindh,² show a style approximating to Ardhanāgarī. One style, which Alberuni calls Bhaikshukī, used in Uduṇpur in Pūrvadeśa (possibly Audaṇḍapura, modern Bihar Sharif—a seat of an important Buddhist monastery), was probably a special writing used by the Buddhists, as he himself says. The remaining scripts, Siddhamātṛikā, Nāgara, Gaurī, Lārī (or Lāṭī, i.e. Kathiawadi), Karṇāṭa, Andhrī, and Dirwārī (i.e. Drāviḍī), are not difficult to recognize. Of these a little confusion arises between Siddhamātṛikā and Nāgara. The latter term is definitely derived from Varṇanāga,³ applied to a style of writing widely current in Malwa, as Alberuni rightly notes. Siddhamātṛikā, according to him, was current in Kashmir, Madhyadeśa (i.e. 'the region round Kanauj') and Vārāṇasī (Banaras), and must refer to the style termed by Fleet '*kuṭila*' and Bühler 'acute-angled', but by about tenth century A.D.¹ it was displaced by Nāgarī in the Ganges Valley and Śāradā in Kashmir. The use of the term 'Siddhamātṛikā' for the *kuṭila* writing is also confirmed by Ziogon's note on the script of the Horiuzi Palm-leaf MS.²