Indian Palaeography c16.s1.9

c16.s1.9

This peculiar characteristic of the record which appears to belong to about the first century B.C. suggests that either the Brāhmī script was introduced in Ceylon before Aśoka (*c.* 273–232 B.C.) who writes it from left to right or less probably that it was influenced by an earlier script of the South. Excepting some portions of the barbarously engraved Yerraguḍi MRE, Aśoka’s Brāhmī records are not to be read from right to left. The present epigraph possibly proves that, like Kharoshṭhī, Brāhmī too was originally written from right to left.²