Indian Palaeography c8.6

c8.6

Having thus recovered the complete, and as I consider it, the primeval alphabet of the Indian languages, I have arranged in the accompanying plate the changes each letter has undergone in successive centuries, as deduced from absolute records on copper or stone. The table furnishes a curious species of palaeographic chronometer, by which an ancient monument may be assigned with considerable accuracy to the period at which it was written, even though it possesses no actual date.¹