Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c14.18

c14.18

After the extinction of the Harappā civilization, there are no inscriptions or manuscripts known in India until the middle of the third century B.C. To this date belong the famous inscriptions cut at the command of Aśoka on surfaces of natural rocks or on pillars to propagate Buddhism, in the Brāhmī script, which itself appears to be of Semitic origin, and thereafter one has a more or less regular series of epigraphic monuments. The climate of India is most unfavourable to the preservation of documents written on such perishable materials as parchment, bark or leaves, and probably the earliest Indian manuscript is the fragmentary Buddhist religious text written on birch-bark in the late fifth century A.D. and found in the Jaulian monastery at Taxila. The Bakhshali manuscript, of the same material, seems the next claimant for high antiquity, though this is only of the twelfth century. Direct information on the earliest manuscripts in India is, incidentally, extraordinarily difficult to come by. Paper was introduced by the Moslems into India in the thirteenth century, but most of the early manuscripts on this or similar substances have long ago decayed or been devoured by white ants.