Indian Palaeography c18.s3.8

c18.s3.8

While Aramaic script was suited to the Aramaic language, it could hardly be used for writing the local language without making necessary changes in the values of the letters to represent the local sounds. It would have been possible to develop Aramaic by the addition of diacritic marks, but this would have led to much complication. Kharoshṭhī is not the result of this process. The letter-forms have not gradually evolved from the original Aramaic to Kharoshṭhī. In order to understand its basic character we must analyse it into an alphabet as following a certain phonology and a script as conforming to certain general principles of form and shape. Its phonology, as has been shown in Chapter 3, is identical with that of Brāhmī, and both have the same rules underlying the conjuncts and vocalized consonants. But the forms are entirely different. The whole system of Kharoshṭhī follows the pattern of Aramaic. The resemblance is not so much in the identity of forms, though a few letters are the same, but in the way in which these forms are produced. The difference in the phonology and the grammar of the local languages stood in the way of adopting Aramaic forms wholesale. The same Aramaic letters could have been taken to stand for different values of sounds, but this would have caused greater confusion, *at least in the minds of the Aramaic-* knowing Satraps, for whose convenience the script was primarily evolved. Hence it was necessary to create the Kharoshṭhī script on the basis of Aramaic. It is only on such an assumption that we can explain the differences in the letter forms of Aramaic and Kharoshṭhī. There is no necessity for assuming a long duration between the introduction of the original Aramaic and the Aśokan Kharoshṭhī, as is done by Taylor. In fact the writing, as seen in the rock edicts of Aśoka, hardly shows any variation in forms. Minor differences seen in them are due to different hands being used and to the engravers’ slips.