Indian Palaeography c16.s1.6

c16.s1.6

There is nothing in the early Ceylonese script which would suggest an origin independent of Indian writing. The Ceylonese phonology as well as the forms of the letters are inseparably connected with those of India, but once a particular script was introduced into Ceylon its later development followed a pattern not necessarily in line with those that obtained in India. In this evolutionary aspect conservatism is a striking feature of Ceylonese writing. While the Indian styles changed from time to time with new technical advances, the older forms tended to survive in Ceylon, probably because of the absence of appreciable change in the technique of writing. This particular feature is termed hereafter the 'conservative writing' of Ceylon. It is this writing which evolved into the later Sinhalese script. But the evolution clearly shows extraneous influences from peninsular India, traceable mainly to five different sources: (i) the Śātavāhana and Western Kshatrapa records, (ii) the cave inscriptions of the extreme south, (iii) the Ikshvāku epigraphs of the eastern coast, (iv) the inscriptions of the Kadambas and other rulers of the western coast, and (v) the Pallava Grantha writing. In Pl. XIX I have given a selected specimen of the scripts showing the conservative writing and the foreign styles that reached Ceylon, but it was not possible to show in detail the influence of each of the latter on the evolution of the local style. I have attempted here to separate the conservative writing from the foreign scripts which from time to time penetrated Ceylon, and to build up a chronology of the alphabetic system in the light of the intruding elements. This chronology may or may not agree with the traditional history of Ceylon, but as my purpose is to study the palaeography of Ceylon, and not to establish the chronology of the Ceylonese kings, I can leave the latter question to the historians.