Early South Indian Palaeography c10.3

c10.3

Though Sir William Jones hazarded his theory on the origin of the Indian alphabet as early as 1806 and was followed in the attempt by some others, yet it cannot be said that the question received any importance or much attention till the Brāhmī inscriptions of Aśoka were deciphered by James Prinsep in 1837.² The study of his decipherment of the script is itself very interesting and reads very much like fiction.