Indian Palaeography c8.5

c8.5

These were the writings seen on the bilingual coins discovered in the north-western regions of India (now in West Pakistan), and in many rock and pillar inscriptions, which later proved to be of the great Mauryan king Aśoka. The story of the decipherment is told by Prinsep himself in his *Indian Antiquities*. Up till then these early writings had been supposed to have been based on principles different from those of later Indian scripts. But their decipherment by Prinsep dealt a death-blow to this concept. He was the first man to realize the significance of his success, and accordingly he prepared a chart with the title ‘Modifications of the Sanskrit Alphabet from 543 b.c. to a.d. 1200’, and added a note: