Indian Palaeography c15.s8.1

c15.s8.1

Mysore and Maharashtra, as used here, do not include the whole of the Kannaḍi- and the Marathi-speaking areas. For the purposes of this study they may be considered as restricted to the upper valleys of the Kistna and the Godavari rivers, where the Sātavāhanas held sway in the early centuries of the Christian era, and where later, between the fifth and the eighth centuries A.D., after the overthrow of the Vākāṭakas, the Kadambas, the Chālukyas and the Rāshtrakūṭas ruled successively. It must, however, be remembered that their territories were seldom coextensive with this whole area. Geographically as well as culturally the two valleys of the Kistna and the Godavari are separate zones—the Kistna valley looking to the south and the Godavari to the north—but there have been many interconnexions. The palaeography of the period dealt with here is one such great unifying factor. Indeed, the Sātavāhana style of writing was a common heritage in this whole area, and its development through the successive centuries shows a uniform pattern. Unlike the Northern Deccan, where the tendency had been to discard the curved strokes and revert to straight lines with strokes drawn at an angle, here an attempt was made to draw all the lines as rounded curves, so that even in the shapes of the letters only those features receive attention which are capable of developing into curves. This can be best understood by looking at the curved verticals of *a*, *ka*, *ra* and *la*, the rounded forms of *u*, *kha*, *ga*, *ta*, *tha*, *ṛa*, *ḷa*, *ḻa*, *va*, *śa*, *sha* and *ha*, and the broad curves in some of the medial vowels. The influence of the stylus is seen in some of the letters, but as the writing is known to us only from copper plates, the wavy curves have mostly been straightened. In any case the notches are not so prominent in this style as they are in the stone inscriptions of the Pallavas from Kāñchī, Māmallapuram, and other places in the south. This tendency to curvature is the main feature inherited by the Kannaḍi writing, to which the styles of this period ultimately led. The palaeography is studied under three main heads: