Indian Palaeography c16.s1.4

c16.s1.4

From these two palaeographical studies we no doubt learn about the changes that a particular letter assumed in different epigraphs, but we hardly get at the underlying principles that caused these changes. The charts may create an impression that all the new forms were locally evolved. But this is not true. Besides the local factors, extraneous influences were largely responsible for introducing new forms into the island. All of them have to be reduced to particular schools and then related to local or foreign styles. The local style is apt to preserve older forms at an unexpectedly late date, but the foreign elements and their influences help in determining the chronology. On the basis of these two working hypotheses a study of the Ceylonese inscriptions down to the eighth century A.D. is here made, and the writing is analysed purely on a technical basis. No help is drawn from the traditional history in fixing the date of the inscriptions.