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Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7: 2 Writing and Scripts in India

Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7

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English

Contents

2 Writing and Scripts in India

2.1 General Introduction

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The history of writing in India, insofar as it applies to the material treated in this book,¹ is essentially coextensive with the history of the Brāhmī script and its many derivatives, and of the Kharoṣṭhī script. While the latter, though important in its day, was a regional script which died out without any descendants, the former is the parent of one of the major script families of the world, comprising not only all of the indigenous scripts of South Asia (as opposed to those of Perso-Arabic or European origin) but also several other major scripts of central and especially Southeast Asia. While the processes of development of these scripts will not be presented in detail in this book (this being, as explained in the preface, primarily a work on epigraphy rather than paleography), the general outlines of these developments, particularly as they relate to epigraphy proper, are presented in the context of a general discussion of the history of epigraphic writing in India.

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¹ As explained in the preface, the protohistoric Indus Valley writing itself will not be discussed here except insofar as it relates to the study of the writings of the historical period.

2.1.1 Writing in traditional India

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On the whole, traditional (i.e., pre-Islamic) India was much less oriented toward the written word than many other ancient and traditional cultures such as those of classical China and Japan or of the Islamic world. From Vedic times on, and even to the present day in some cultural contexts, it is oral rather than written learning that has always been esteemed in India as true knowledge, an attitude reflected in such proverbs as *pustakasthā tu yā vidyā parahastagataṃ dhanam*, “Knowledge in a book [is like] money in someone else’s hand.”² There is a pervasive, if unspoken, attitude that the written word is essentially a reflection rather than a true manifestation of language, and this may explain the relative lack of attention to the aesthetic aspects of writing in traditional India (2.⁵.³), as well as the carelessness and imprecision which characterize many, though by no means all, of the written documents, both epigraphic and non-epigraphic, of ancient India (2.5.1).

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² Quoted by Ojhā, BPLM 14 n. 6 (attributed to the *Cāṇakya-nīti*). The esteem accorded to the spoken as opposed to the written word should not, however, be overstated. In this connection, Kālidāsa’s *Raghuvaṃśa* 3.28cd, *liper yathāvadgrahaṇena vāṅmayaṃ nadīmukheneva samudram āviśat*, “As one enters the ocean through the mouth of a river, so did [Raghu] enter into literature by learning to write correctly,” has been cited (e.g., in PIP 4 and Falk, SAI 252 n. 2) as an indication of the respect accorded to the written word, at least in the classical (as opposed to the Vedic) tradition. This status is also reflected in the attribution of the invention of writing to Brahmā himself (see later discussion).

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This same orientation no doubt also explains the paucity of descriptions of writing as such in Sanskrit and related literatures. Discussions of the origin and history of writing, its varieties, styles and methods, and practical instruction therein are surprisingly rare in Indic texts, though we do find a few more or less incidental references in some relatively late texts to the invention of writing by the creator god Brahmā.³ This tradition is also reflected iconographically, Brahmā and also his wife (or daughter) Sarasvatī, the goddess of learning, being regularly depicted in sculpture with a book in hand. But beyond legendary accounts such as these, the literature of the Brahmanical-Hindu tradition has, on the whole, little to say about writing as such; this, in striking contrast with its profound fascination with (spoken) language and grammar.

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³ E.g., *nākariṣyad yadi sraṣṭā likhitaṃ cakṣur uttamam / tatreyam asya lokasya nābhaviṣyac chubhā gatiḥ*, "Had the Creator [Brahmā] not invented writing, the supreme eye, the course of this world would not have gone well" (Richard W. Lariviere, ed., *The Nāradasmṛti*, University of Pennsylvania Studies on South Asia, vol. 4 [Philadelphia: Department of South Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1989], I.78); and a verse attributed in several sources (e.g., Mitramiśra's *Vyavahāraprakāśa*; see BIP 1 n. 3 and PIP 3 n. 2 for further references) to Bṛhaspati: *ṣāṇmāsike' pi samaye bhrāntiḥ saṃjāyate nṛṇām / dhātrākṣarāṇi sṛṣṭāni patrārūḍhāny ataḥ purā*, "Because men forget things within six months, of old the Creator invented letters [to be] set down on leaves."

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The picture is somewhat different in the heterodox traditions of Buddhism and Jainism, which (especially the former) exhibit a higher esteem for the written word.⁴ Moreover, it is only in the texts of these traditions that we find lists of Indic scripts. Most important among these is the list in the tenth chapter (*Lipiśālāsaṃdarśana-parivarta*) of the *Lalitavistara*⁵ of the sixty-four scripts (*lipi*), beginning with Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭī [*sic*], which the future Buddha knew as a child.⁶ The historical value of this list, however, is limited by several factors. Its date, first of all, is uncertain. While the *Lalitavistara* as such is known to be fairly old (a version of it had already been translated into Chinese in A.D. 308),⁷ different versions of the text must have existed at various times, and certain indications in the extant script list (notably the inclusion of no. 23, Hūnalipi, “the script of the Huns is presented with the introductory remark *bambhīe ṇaṃ livīe aṭṭhārasaviha-likkhavihāṇe paṇṇatte*, “18 different forms of writing of the Brāhmī script are known.” This evidently means that the term “Brāhmī” applies to writing as such (presumably referring to its legendary creation by Brahmā, as discussed earlier; cf. OIBA 25), as well as to a particular script, no. 1 in the list which follows, which may or may not actually refer to what modern scholars call “Brāhmī” script (2.2.2).

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⁴ It is thus not a coincidence that the art of calligraphy is more highly developed in Buddhist and Jaina manuscript traditions than in Brahmanical circles.

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⁵ The *Mahāvastu* (I.135 in E. Senart's edition [Paris: L'Imprimerie Nationale, 1882]) also has a similar list of thirty-two scripts.

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⁶ The list, according to the edition of S. Lefmann (Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1902), I.125–6 reads:
(1) Brāhmī (2) Kharoṣṭī (3) Puṣkarasārī (4) Aṅgalipi (5) Vaṅgalipi (6) Magadhalipi (7) Maṅgalyalipi (8) Aṅgulīyalipi (9) Sakārilipi (10) Brahmavalilipi (11) Pāruṣyalipi (12) Drāviḍalipi (13) Kirātalipi (14) Dākṣiṇyalipi (15) Ugralipi (16) Saṃkhyālipi (17) Anulomalipi (18) Avamūrdhalipi (19) Daradalipi (20) Khāṣyalipi (21) Cīnalipi (22) Lūnalipi (23) Hūnalipi (24) Madhyākṣaravistaralipi (25) Puṣpalipi (26) Devalipi (27) Nāgalipi (28) Yakṣalipi (29) Gandharvalipi (30) Kinnaralipi (31) Mahoragalipi (32) Asuralipi (33) Garuḍalipi (34) Mṛgacakralipi (35) Vāyasarutalipi (36) Bhaumadevalipi (37) Antarīkṣadevalipi (38) Uttarakurudvīpalipi (39) Aparagauḍānīlipi (40) Pūrvavidehalipi (41) Utkṣepalipi (42) Nikṣepalipi (43) Vikṣepalipi (44) Prakṣepalipi (45) Sāgaralipi (46) Vajralipi (47) Lekhapratilekhalipi (48) Anudrutalipi (49) Śāstrāvartā [*lipi] (50) Gaṇanāvartalipi (51) Utkṣepāvartalipi (52) Nikṣepāvartalipi (53) Pādalikhitalipi (54) Dviruttarapadasandhilipi (55) Yāvaddāśottarapadasandhilipi (56) Madhyāhāriṇīlipi (57) Sarvaruta-saṃgrahaṇīlipi (58) Vidyānulomāvimiśritalipi (59) Ṛṣitapastaptā rocamānā [*lipi] (60) Dharaṇīprekṣiṇīlipi (61) Gaganaprekṣiṇīlipi (62) Sarvauṣadhiniṣyandā [*lipi] (63) Sarvasārasaṃgrahaṇī [*lipi] (64) Sarvabhūtarutagrahaṇī [*lipi]. The names of the scripts vary considerably in different editions; compare, e.g., the list as given in Rājendralāla Mitra's edition (Bibliotheca Indica no. 15 [Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1877], 143–4).

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Other than these, very few references to script types and names have been located in Sanskrit and related literatures, so that the further study of the origin and development of the Indic scripts must be pursued from the evidence of the documents (almost exclusively epigraphic for the earlier phases) themselves.

2.1.2 The antiquity of writing in India of the historical period

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O. von Hinüber, *Der Beginn der Schrift* . . . [BS]; H. Falk, *Schrift im alten Indien* [SAI].

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After more than a century of study, the early history of writing in India remains problematic. It begins with the still undeciphered script found on the seals and other relics of the Indus Valley civilization, which flourished, according to recent estimates, around the second half of the third and first half of the second millennium B.C. But after the decline of the Indus Valley culture, the graphic record of India is virtually a total blank for well over a thousand years until the time of the Aśokan inscriptions, the earliest definitely datable written records of the historical period, around the middle of the third century B.C. From this time on, written records (epigraphic and, in later centuries, manuscript and other nonepigraphic sources) become increasingly common, so that the development of the Indian scripts and their many derivatives both in and outside of India can, for the most part, be traced in considerable detail from Aśoka’s time to the present day.

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But practically nothing is known of what might have happened in the long period between (very roughly) 1750 and 260 B.C. Certain bits of evidence have been proposed as missing links between the protohistoric and historical writings. For example, graffiti found on megalithic and chalcolithic pottery from southern and western India were discussed by B. B. Lal,¹⁰ who noted (23–4) resemblances of some of the shapes found in these graffiti to both Indus Valley script characters and letters of the Brāhmī script. However, Lal concluded with the suitably cautious note that “to stress the point that the symbols do have a phonetic, syllabic or alphabetic value would indeed be presumptuous in the present state of our knowledge” (24). A few inscriptions, or pseudo-inscriptions, have been proposed as specimens of “prehistoric” writing or “missing links” between the Indus Valley script and Brāhmī, for instance, the Vikramkhol “inscription,” but none of these examples of supposed prehistorical writing is convincing.¹¹ In short, the evidence currently available does not permit us to determine conclusively whether the art of writing simply died out in the second millennium B.C., to be replaced much later by unrelated systems, or whether (though this seems much less likely) some form of it, as yet undiscovered, somehow survived and reemerged in the form of the scripts of historical times.

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¹⁰ “From the Megalithic to the Harappa: Tracing Back the Graffiti on the Pottery,” *Ancient India* 16, 1960, 4–24.

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¹¹ Possible connections between the Indus Valley writing and Brāhmī are further discussed in section 2.2.3.1.

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Because of the virtual absence of actual documentary evidence for writing in the blank period, many historians and epigraphists have addressed the question of the possibility of literacy in pre-Mauryan India through the examination of literary and other evidence. The literature on the subject is far too extensive to be presented in detail here. The discussions by Burnell (SIP 1–11), Bühler (OIBA 5–35 and BIP 3–6), Ojhā (BPLM 1–16), Pandey (PIP 1–22), and Sircar (IIEP 104–6) may be taken as more or less representative of earlier opinions, of which a complete survey and up-to-date analysis is provided in Falk's SAI. To begin with Vedic literature, certain authors (notably Ojhā in BPLM 9–13 and, mostly following him, Pandey and others) have claimed evidence for a literate culture in the later Vedic texts, and even in the *Ṛg Veda*, on the grounds of references therein to poetic meters, grammatical and phonetic terms, very large numbers, and relatively complex arithmetic calculations. But it is by no means certain that such cultural phenomena presuppose literacy, and it may be argued to the contrary that the absence of a single explicit and indisputable reference to writing anywhere in early Vedic literature suggests that the Vedic culture was a preliterate one.¹²

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¹² See the classic presentation of this position in F. Max Müller's *History of Sanskrit Literature So Far as It Illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans* (London: Williams and Norgate, 1859), 455–80. See also BIP 5 and, more recently, BS 18 and SAI 240–56.

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The testimony of Greek and Latin authors on writing in early India has been studied by many scholars¹³ but remains somewhat inconclusive. For example, Nearchos, who visited northwestern India around 325 B.C., explicitly mentions that Indians wrote letters (ἐπιστολὰς) on cotton cloth. This observation is usually assumed to refer to the Kharoṣṭhī script, but it has recently been suggested¹⁴ that Nearchos may actually have been referring to writing in Aramaic. Megasthenes, who lived in northeastern India some two decades after Nearchos, stated that the Indians "did not know written characters" (οὐδὲ γὰρ γράμματα εἰδέναι αὐτούς), but it is not entirely certain whether this is a blanket statement¹⁵ or refers only to the immediate context of legal procedures in which the comment was made. The confusion on this issue among the classical historians seems to be reflected in Strabo's comment, with reference to Nearchos' report, that "others opine that they did not make use of written characters."

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¹³ Most recently and authoritatively by von Hinüber (BS 19–21) and Falk (SAI 290–7).

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¹⁴ By von Hinüber, BS 21; cf. SAI 290.

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¹⁵ So von Hinüber, BS 20; cf. SAI 291–3.

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The Pāli Buddhist canon, especially the *Jātakas* and the *Vinaya-piṭaka*, contains numerous explicit references to writing and written documents, particularly to "private and official correspondence by means of letters" (OIBA 7). But it is uncertain whether any of these references can really be taken to represent the state of things in pre-Mauryan India, as Bühler and others have claimed, since all or most of them seem to belong to the later strata of the canon (BS 22–54; SAI 270–83). In Pāṇini's *Aṣṭādhyāyī* (3.2.21) we seem to have a clear reference to early writing in the term *lipi*/*libi* 'script'.¹⁶ Pāṇini's date is a matter of complex controversy, but an authoritative recent opinion is that "the evidence available hardly allows one to date Pāṇini later than the early to mid fourth century B.C.,”¹⁷ which would seem to provide us a strong indication of writing before the Mauryan period. But here too (as in the case of Nearchos), it has recently been suggested¹⁸ that the script known to Pāṇini might be Aramaic rather than any Indian script.

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¹⁶ Although even this has been questioned; see BS 57. The term *grantha* (*Aṣṭādhyāyī* 1.3.75, 4.3.87, 4.3.116), though normally rendered "book," need not necessarily refer to a written composition (SAI 261–2, 298–9).

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¹⁷ George Cardona, *Pāṇini: A Survey of Research* (Mouton: The Hague/Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), 268.

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¹⁸ BS 58; SAI 258.

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As to archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the antiquity of writing in the historical period, we have only a small handful of brief archaic inscriptions (see 4.3.1.2) which could conceivably be somewhat older than the Aśokan inscriptions. But the weight of scholarly opinion nowadays¹⁹ is in favor of dating such early records as the Piprāwā, Sohgaurā, and Mahāsthān inscriptions as contemporary with or later than Aśoka.²⁰ Certain paleographic characteristics of the early inscriptions, such as the absence of distinction in some records (e.g., Mahāsthān) of vowel length—mostly for vowels other than *a* and *ā*—have sometimes been taken as an indication of their pre-Aśokan antiquity; yet the very same phenomena have been invoked by others in support of arguments for a recent origin and short period of development for the Brāhmī script. Equally inconclusive is the matter of alleged regional variations in early Brāhmī. Bühler (OIBA 40; cf. BIP 6–8) took this as evidence that “the letters of the [Aśokan] edicts had been used at least during four or five hundred years,” but more recent studies by C. S. Upasak and A. H. Dani (see 2.2.4) have largely discredited the supposed regional variants of Aśokan Brāhmī, and some (e.g., S. R. Goyal in OBS 7–10) have taken the geographical unity of the Aśokan script as evidence that it must have been a recent invention or development.

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¹⁹ Reviewed in SAI 177–88.

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²⁰ All attempts to attribute specific dates to certain of the early inscriptions have been decisively discredited. For example, Ojhā’s (BPLM 2–3) dating of the Baṛlī inscription (SI 89–90) to the year 84 of a supposed Jaina era of 527 B.C., i.e., to 443 B.C., is out of the question; Sircar dates the inscription to the late second century B.C. on paleographic grounds. The alleged specimens of Kharoṣṭhī and Brāhmī letters on coins of the Achaemenian emperors of Iran are also doubtful (see 2.3.2 n. 132).

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However, a new body of material has recently come to light that seems to support the older theory that Brāhmī existed before Mauryan times, that is, in the fourth century B.C. or possibly even earlier. This is a small group of potsherds bearing short inscriptions, evidently proper names, which were found in the course of excavations at Anurādhapura, Sri Lanka in strata which are said to be securely assigned by radiocarbon dating to the pre-Mauryan period.²¹ Various dates have been proposed for these graffiti, ranging from the sixth to the early fourth century B.C. The more recent publications on the subject have tended to favor the later date within this range, but in any case, these inscriptions still seem to show that Brāhmī did indeed predate the Mauryan period. Some doubts remain, however, as to the chronological significance of these inscriptions; it is possible, for example, that the inscribed potsherds were intrusive in the strata concerned, and actually date from a later period, although the excavators have argued against this scenario.

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²¹ See S. U. Deraniyagala, *The Prehistory of Sri Lanka: An Ecological Perspective* (Archaeological Survey of Sri Lanka, 1992), 2.739–50; F. R. Allchin, *The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia: The Emergence of Cities and States* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 163–81 and 209–16; R. A. F. Coningham, F. R. Allchin, C. M. Batt, and D. Lucy, “Passage to India? Anuradhapura and the Early Use of the Brahmi Script,” *Cambridge Archaeological Journal* 6, 1996, 73–97 (esp. 76–7); and further references provided in these sources.

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In conclusion, both the literary and the epigraphic evidence for the antiquity of historical writing in India are disappointingly inconclusive, since virtually all of the testimony is in one way or another vague or ambiguous. Probably the most cogent single piece of literary evidence for writing before the Mauryan period is Pāṇini's reference to script (*lipi*), although the uncertainties as to his date partially vitiate the value of this testimony. Moreover, although it seems clear that this proves the existence of some form of writing in Pāṇini's home region of northwestern South Asia in or before the mid-fourth century B.C., there is no explicit indication as to what type of script²² he is referring to. Although, as noted earlier, Falk and von Hinüber have recently suggested that may have been Aramaic, there is actually no cogent reason to rule out Kharoṣṭhī, which therefore may well date back to the mid-fourth century B.C. or quite possibly even earlier (see 2.3.2 and 2.3.6). But even if this is so, there is no direct evidence for the use of Brāhmī before the time of Aśoka. Thus, the trend of recent writings such as BS²³ and SAI has been to emphasize an empirical interpretation of the actual surviving data, which leads to the conclusion that at least Brāhmī, and probably Kharoṣṭhī as well, did not exist before the Mauryan period, and hence that (leaving aside the protohistoric Indus script) writing originated in India no earlier than the late fourth century B.C. However, the recent discovery, mentioned above, of apparently pre-Mauryan graffiti in Sri Lanka has cast some doubt upon this point of view.

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²² As has been noted in various sources, most recently SAI 259–61, the interpretation of Pāṇini's prescription (4.1.49) of the feminine adjective *yavanānī* as referring to *lipi*, i.e., the Greek script, is based on a *vārtikā* of Kātyāyana and hence does not prove anything about Pāṇini's own knowledge of Greek script.

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²³ E.g., BS 22: "Fremde Beobachtungen sprechen also in Übereinstimmung mit den Zeugnissen aus Epigraphik und Numismatik eindeutig dafür, daß es in Indien vor Aśoka keine Schrift gegeben hat, wenn man von den indischen Provinzen des Achämenidenreiches absieht." ("Thus, foreign observations clearly agree with the testimony of epigraphy and numismatics that there was no writing in India before Aśoka, with the exception of the Indian provinces of the Achaemenian empire.")

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Moreover, many other authorities have found it difficult to imagine that the evidently high level of political organization and cultural complexity that had been reached in the pre-Mauryan period could have existed without writing. Thus various estimates for a hypothetical prehistory of Indian writing have been proposed. Bühler's suggestion (OIBA 84; also BIP 16) of an early date of ca. 800 B.C., or possibly even earlier, for the "introduction of the prototypes of the Brāhma letters" into India is hardly plausible in light of modern knowledge, but more cautious estimates such as that of A. B. Keith that "the real development of writing belongs in all likelihood to the fifth century B.C." are not unreasonable.²⁴ This more traditional point of view has recently been maintained by, among others, K. R. Norman.²⁵ Like other proponents of pre-Mauryan writing, Norman (279) attributes the absence of any surviving written records before the time of Aśoka to the fact that early writing was primarily used for ephemeral documents. The practice of writing monumental inscriptions on stone was presumably an innovation of Aśoka himself, possibly under the inspiration of the Achaemenian empire of neighboring Iran. Before Aśoka, writing was probably used principally, if not exclusively, for economic and administrative, as opposed to literary and monumental, purposes; perishable materials such as palm leaves, tree bark, and (according to Nearchos) cloth, which have little chance of surviving the rigors of the Indian climate, were used. Thus, according to this view, we need not be surprised that no early specimens of Indian writing have survived, and their absence does not prove that they never existed.

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²⁴ In E. J. Rapson, ed., *Cambridge History of India*, Vol. 1: *Ancient India* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 126.

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²⁵ In his review of von Hinüber's BS in *JRAS*, ser. 3, vol. 3, 1993, 277–81. See also R. Salomon, "On the Origin of Early Indian Scripts" [review article on von Hinüber's BS, Falk's SAI, etc.], *JAOS* 115, 1995, 271–9, esp. 278–9.

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Such hypothetical pre-Mauryan writing would presumably (though not necessarily; see Goyal, OBS 2, 30) have been some protoform of Brāhmī and/or Kharoṣṭhī script. The nondifferentiation of vowel length in Kharoṣṭhī generally, and also, as noted earlier, in some early specimens of Brāhmī, suggests that a pre-Aśokan Brāhmī would not yet have distinguished vowel quantity. Similarly, indications from the extant early specimens suggest that the notation of consonant groups would have been rudimentary or even totally absent in their presumptive prototypes. The protoscripts may also have had an incomplete array of phonemes vis-à-vis Sanskrit, since they were presumably developed for recording early MIA dialects rather than Sanskrit. The confusion between *s* and *ṣ* in some early Brāhmī inscriptions (see 2.2.4), for example, suggests that the earliest forms of the script did not have distinct characters for the three sibilants of Sanskrit. The script that we actually have in the Aśokan inscriptions thus could be a refined and standardized "national" script, developed under Aśoka for purposes of governing his vast pan-Indian empire, on the basis of an earlier form of Brāhmī or proto-Brāhmī script, of which the Anurādhapura graffiti may be a specimen.

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In short, two schools of thought are dominant with regard to the problem of the antiquity of writing in historical India. One side sees no cogent archaeological or literary evidence for the existence of writing, and particularly of Brāhmī script, before the Mauryan period. The other camp finds this hard to accept on pragmatic grounds, and moreover now sees archaeological evidence of pre-Mauryan Brāhmī in the Anurādhapura graffiti, which are allegedly datable to the early fourth century B.C. at the latest. The issue remains unresolved, though it may be hoped that further discussions and examinations of the new evidence may ultimately lead to a consensus.

2.1.3 Characteristics of Indic writing

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With only a few partial exceptions (see n. 37 and 2.2.5.1), all of the Indic scripts (that is, Brāhmī and its derivatives, and Kharoṣṭhī) follow the same basic principles of graphic representation. This system is, in historical terms, a modified consonantsyllabic script whose basic unit is the graphic syllable (which by definition ends with a vowel) typically consisting of a consonant with or without diacritic modification to indicate the following vowel, and/or other modifications such as nasalization indicated by the *anusvāra* sign. Various diacritic strokes are added to the top or bottom of the consonantal character to indicate the vowels *ā*, *i*, *ī*, *u*, *ū*, *ṛ*, and so on, but the vowel *a* is treated as inherent in the consonant. That is to say, an unmarked consonant is to be read with the vowel *a*; thus early Brāhmī + = modern Devanāgarī क = *ka*; 𑀓𑀸 = का = *kā*; 𑀓𑀺 = कि = *ki*, and so on.

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This system, and particularly the inherent vowel rule, leads to certain complications. First, to represent a syllable consisting of a vowel only, without a preceding consonant,²⁶ these scripts require a set of full vowel signs in addition to the more frequently used diacritic vowels; thus Brāhmī 𑀅 = Devanāgarī अ = *a*; 𑀆 = आ = *ā*, and so on. Second, the representation of consonants which are not immediately followed by vowels, that is, of consonant clusters and of word, line, or sentence final consonants, also requires special techniques. Consonant clusters are represented by various types of ligatures of the consonants concerned, joined together or abbreviated in such a way as to make it evident that the prior consonant(s) are to be pronounced together with the following one(s), without an intervening vowel. Thus in Brāhmī the syllable *tva* must be written as 𑀢𑁆𑀯 (= Devanāgarī त्व ) in order to distinguish it from 𑀢𑀯 = *tava* ( तव ). Final consonants are indicated either by a reduced form of the normal consonant or by a special diacritic sign (called *virāma* or *halanta*) indicating cancellation of the inherent vowel (e.g., Devanāgarī क् = *k*, not *ka*).²⁷

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²⁶ Such occurrences are relatively rare in Sanskrit, which in general disallows vowel hiatus within and between words, so that in Sanskrit texts the full or initial vowels mostly occur at the beginning of a sentence or line of verse. They are commoner in Prakrit and other languages which do permit vowel hiatus, but even here they are often avoided by writing a consonant such as *y* or *v* to represent an intervocalic glide.

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²⁷ The notation of final consonants is a relatively late development, first appearing in the earlier centuries of the Christian era (2.2.5.2). This is due to the fact that Prakrit, in which all of the early inscriptions are written, does not permit word final consonants, so that their notation only became necessary later when inscriptions began to be written in Sanskrit.

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The Indic system of writing is difficult to classify in terms of the traditional typology of writing systems which recognizes three main script types, namely, logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic.²⁸ The Indian system is syllabic in the sense that its basic graphic unit is the syllable (*akṣara*), but it differs from a pure syllabary in that the individual phonetic components of the syllable are separately indicated within the syllabic unit. It thus resembles an alphabet insofar as the vowels have a separate and independent notation but cannot be called a true alphabet in that the vowels do not have a fully independent status equal to that of the consonants (this being the defining characteristic of an alphabet in the strict sense of the term). Although the Indic scripts do have alphabetic symbols for the vowels in the “full” or initial vowel characters, these were never extended beyond their restricted use for vowels not preceded by a consonant, and thus did not attain full alphabetic status.

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²⁸ Ignatz Gelb (*A Study of Writing* [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953], 188) admits to “disturbing problems” in connection with the typological classification of the Indic and similar script types, and does not reach a definite conclusion on the point.

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Various terms have been suggested for this type of script, intermediate between syllabary and alphabet, such as “neosyllabary,”²⁹ “pseudoalphabet,” or “alphabetic syllabary.”³⁰ There is as yet no commonly accepted term in the relatively rudimentarily developed field of grammatology for scripts of this type. Thus, for the present it may be best to refer to it by general descriptive terms such as semisyllabary or semialphabet (since it partakes of significant features of both systems), or, more precisely, as "diacritically (or alphabetically) modified consonant syllabary." Whichever terminology one might prefer to adopt, the Indic script family, comprising all of the derivatives and modifications of Brāhmī script in India and firmly entrenched that they were not subject to fundamental reform, or through the influence of the previously mentioned linguistic principle of the *akṣara*, or for other reasons; the vowel-cancelling marker alluded to earlier is, in general, used only when there is no other way to represent a vowelless consonant, such as at the end of a word, sentence, or line.³⁶ In any case, the result was that the Indic system, remarkable for precision if not for simplicity, has been preserved virtually unchanged in nearly all of the many scripts used for Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages.³⁷

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²⁹ James G. Février, *Histoire de l’écriture* (Paris: Payot, 1959), 333.

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³⁰ Fred W. Householder Jr., *Classical Journal* 54, 1958–59, 382. Recently Peter T. Daniels (*JAOS* 110, 1990, 730) has suggested the name “abugida,” “from the Ethiopian word for the auxiliary order of consonants in the signary.” This term, however, is more likely to appeal to Semitists than to Indologists, who might prefer a name like “*akṣara* script,” this being the Indic term which would come closest to a designation of this type of writing.

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³⁶ This restriction has, however, been somewhat relaxed in modern usage due to the exigencies of printing, in which some consonantal ligatures are impractically cumbersome and are therefore sometimes split up by use of the *halanta* sign.

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³⁷ Note that some Indic scripts which have been adapted for non-Indo-Aryan languages have introduced simplifications that eliminate the need for consonantal conjuncts. Such is the case, e.g., in Tamil (see also 2.2.5.1), which regularly writes vowelless consonants in their full syllabic form and marks them with a dot (*puḷḷi*) to indicate that no vowel follows (e.g., கண்டம் *kaṇṭam*, ‘piece’).

2.2 The Brāhmī Script and Its Derivatives

2.2.1 Geographical and chronological range

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Unlike Kharoṣṭhī, which was always geographically limited and died out at a relatively early period (see 2.3.1 and 2.3.2), the Brāhmī script (see table 2.1) appeared in the third century b.c. as a fully developed pan-Indian national script (sometimes used as a second script even within the proper territory of Kharoṣṭhī in the northwest) and continued to play this role throughout history, becoming the parent of all of the modern Indic scripts both within India and beyond. Thus, with the exceptions of the Indus script in the protohistoric period, of Kharoṣṭhī in the northwest in the ancient period, and of the Perso-Arabic and European scripts in the medieval and modern periods, respectively, the history of writing in India is virtually synonymous with the history of the Brāhmī script and its derivatives.

2.2.2 The name of the script

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Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharoṣṭhī) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as “lath” or “Lāṭ,”³⁸ “Southern Aśokan,” “Indian Pali,” “Mauryan,” and so on. The application to it of the name Brāhmī [*sc. lipi*], which stands at the head of the Buddhist and Jaina script lists (see 2.1.1), was first suggested by T[errien] de Lacouperie,³⁹ who noted that in the Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia *Fa yüan chu lin* the scripts whose names corresponded to the Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī of the *Lalitavistara* are described as written from left to right and from right to left, respectively. He therefore suggested that the name Brāhmī should refer to the left-to-right “Indo-Pali” script of the Aśokan pillar inscriptions, and Kharoṣṭhī to the right-to-left “Bactro-Pali” script of

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³⁸ This name arose from the occurrence of Aśokan inscriptions on pillars known colloquially in northern India as *lāṭh* (< Skt. *yaṣṭi*).

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³⁹ “Did Cyrus Introduce Writing into India?” *Babylonian and Oriental Record* 1, 1886–87, 58–64 (esp. 59–60). As noted by Falk (SAI 84, 106), Terrien de Lacouperie evidently got the references in question from the note of T. Choutzé (pseudonym of Gabriel Devéria) in the *Revue de l’Extrême-Orient* 1, 1882, 158–9, though he does not mention him.

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TABLE 2.1. Early Brāhmī Script

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Note: These are normalized forms, based on letters found in Aśokan inscriptions, where available; otherwise from other earliest citations elsewhere.

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the rock inscriptions from the northwest. Lacouperie’s suggestion was adopted by his contemporaries, most significantly by Bühler⁴⁰ in his influential works, and thereby became the accepted term.

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⁴⁰ The expression “Brāhma alphabet” used by Bühler in OIBA has, however, been supplanted in modern usage by “Brāhmī” [*lipi*].

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While the name Brāhmī for the ancient Indian national script is no doubt in a general sense correct, it should be kept in mind that we do not really know precisely what form or derivative of the script the authors of the early script lists were referring to as “Brāhmī,” nor whether this term was actually applied to the script used in the time of Aśoka.⁴¹ The name Brāhmī is thus used loosely, as a matter of convenience, by modern scholars to refer to the Aś method [as Cunningham’s] may establish anything, or—nothing.”⁴⁵ Other early speculative theories attributed the origin of Brāhmī in the protohistoric period to various “races,” such as the Dravidians⁴⁶ or the “enlightened Aryans.”⁴⁷

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⁴⁵ *The Alphabet*, I.307 n. 1.

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⁴⁶ Edward Thomas, *JRAS*, n.s. 5, 1871, 421–2 n. 2. See also, more recently, T. N. Subramanian in SITI III.2, 1587–1608.

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⁴⁷ John Dowson, “The Invention of the Indian Alphabet,” *JRAS*, n.s. 13, 1881, 102–20 (quoted 118).

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Somewhat more sophisticated than these superficial theories are the arguments of G. H. Ojhā in BPLM, who was highly critical of Bühler’s Semitic derivation (see 2.2.3.2.4) and was inclined to doubt any foreign derivation, though he avoided denying the possibility altogether. Ojhā concluded (30) that an indigenous origin is most likely, although the precise source and development cannot be specified. R. B. Pandey (PIP 35–51) argued more categorically in favor of an indigenous origin, concluding that “the *Brāhmī* characters were invented by the genius of the Indian people who were far ahead of other peoples of ancient times in linguistics and who evolved vast Vedic literature involving a definite knowledge of alphabet” (51).

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Since the discovery in the 1920s and subsequent decades of extensive written artifacts of the Indus Valley civilization dating back to the third and second millennia B.C., several scholars have proposed that the presumptive indigenous prototype of the Brāhmī script must have been the Indus Valley script or some unknown derivative thereof. This possibility was first proposed⁴⁸ by S. Langdon in 1931,⁴⁹ supported by G. R. Hunter,⁵⁰ and endorsed by several later authorities,⁵¹ most significantly by D. C. Sircar.⁵²

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⁴⁸ It is, however, interesting to note that as early as 1877 Cunningham (*Inscriptions of Asoka*, 61) proposed as a possible ancestor of Aśokan Brāhmī a single inscribed seal from Harappa, which was then an isolated find whose significance had not yet become clear; Cunningham estimated its date as not later than 500 or 400 B.C.

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⁴⁹ “The Indus Script,” ch. 23 of John Marshall, *Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Valley Civilization* (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1931), II.423–55.

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⁵⁰ *The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and Its Connection with Other Scripts*, Studies in the History of Culture, no. 1 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1934).

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⁵¹ E.g., Pandey (PIP 51), who suggests a connection with the Indus Valley script (“The *Brāhmī* was derived from pictographs, ideographs and phonetic signs, the earliest specimens of which are to be found in the Indus Valley inscriptions”), but does not elaborate any further.

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⁵² SI I.242 n. 1; IIEP 107–8, 111; EINES 85. See also OBS 70–1 and 84–5.

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It has already been mentioned (2.1.2) that such a connection between the protohistoric Indus writing and the later Brāhmī script should not be taken for granted, that is, it should not be assumed a priori that two scripts of the same cultural area but different periods must be historically or genetically connected. It is all too easy, given the large number of characters in the Indus script (over four hundred), to find superficial connections between similar shapes of some characters in the two scripts, but these are of little value unless and until the Indus script itself is convincingly deciphered and the alleged graphic similarities can be correlated to phonetic values. Various claims to decipherment of the Indus script based on such superficial comparisons with Brāhmī, such as that of Langdon and many since him, are not at all convincing and have little if any scholarly value. Equally unconvincing are the various claims put forward for the Vikramkhol and other pseudoinscriptions (see 2.1.2) as constituting a link between the Indus Valley and Brāhmī scripts.⁵³

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⁵³ E.g., K. P. Jayaswal, “The Vikramkhol Inscriptions,” *IA* 62, 1933, 58–60.

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There is, however, at least one feature of the Indus script which could in fact indicate a systemic connection with the historical scripts of India. The former script has a large number of what appear to be compounded and/or diacritically modified forms of the basic characters, which are reminiscent of the characteristic patterns of the Indic scripts of the historical period (2.1.3). Hunter⁵⁴ hypothesized that this system functioned to indicate, among other things, vowel variations, exactly as in Brāhmī, and ventured (92–3, 102–3) to directly derive some of the Brāhmī vowel diacritics from Indus Valley signs. He also pointed out (54) a possible relationship with the Brāhmī system of conjunct consonant formation. These parallels, noted by Hunter and others since him (e.g., Dani, DIP 16–7), are certainly intriguing, and could actually reflect some historical connection, direct or indirect, between the scripts. Nevertheless, in view of the still undeciphered status of the Indus script and the huge chronological gap between it and the earliest attested scripts of the historical period, it would be premature to try to explain and evaluate the significance of the apparent typological similarities.

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⁵⁴ Op. cit. (n. 50), 1 and 51–8.

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Recently several writers have put forth theories to the effect that Brāhmī was purposefully invented ex nihilo in or around the time of Aśoka. S. R. Goyal, for example,⁵⁵ argued that the phonetically logical structure, primary geometric forms, and geographical uniformity of early Brāhmī show that it was “an invention of the grammarians” (10) of the time of Aśoka. Similar arguments were presented by T. P. Verma, who proposed an origin in Buddhist circles.⁵⁶ N. P. Rastogi, in *Origin of Brāhmī Script*, offered a purely formal presentation of “the origin of the Brāhmī script from the geometric signs in the Vedic period” (139).

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⁵⁵ “Brāhmī—An Invention of the Early Mauryan Period,” in OBS 1–53.

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⁵⁶ *The Palaeography of Brāhmī Script in North India*, 8, and “Fresh Light on the Origin of Brāhmī Alphabet,” JOI 13, 1964, 360–71 (esp. 367).

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The strongest point in favor of the invention theory is the stiffly symmetrical, geometric appearance of Aśokan Brāhmī, which does indeed give the impression of an arbitrarily created script. But this superficial feature does not necessarily prove anything about the history of the script; Aśokan Brāhmī as we have it could be a formalized monumental version of a preexisting script of more cursive aspect. Moreover, despite its superficially regular and standardized appearance, closer analysis reveals variations in individual letter forms and systemic features (see 2.2.4) which are suggestive of a reformed version of a preexisting script. For other reasons as well, the invention theories are not persuasive.⁵⁷ The comparative study of the history of the evolution of writing systems worldwide shows that the invention ex nihilo of a highly sophisticated script would be unusual, if not completely unique. Arbitrarily created scripts are generally based, to a greater or lesser degree, on preexisting scripts which the creators of the new script know or at least have seen. Moreover, as will be seen later (2.2.3.2.4 and 2.2.3.2.5), there are clear indications that a Semitic script, presumably Aramaic, served, in part at least, as a model for Brāhmī. In any case, all of the invention theories are purely speculative, lacking any hard historical or documentary support.

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⁵⁷ See also the generally critical discussions of Goyal’s invention theory in OBS 67–125.

2.2.3.2 Theories of non-Indian (Semitic) origin

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*2.2.3.2.1 Greek.* James Prinsep, the decipherer of Brāhmī (see 6.2.1), was the first to suggest a possible connection between Greek and the ancient Indian scripts, namely, that “the oldest Greek . . . was nothing more than Sanskrit [*sic*] turned topsy turvy!”⁵⁸ This relationship was reversed by K. Ottfried Müller,⁵⁹ who proposed that Brāhmī was derived from Greek after the invasion of Alexander the Great. A modified version of the Greek theory was proposed by J. Halévy,⁶⁰ who derived six of the Brāhmī characters (*a*, *ba*, *ga*, *dha*, *tha*, and *na*) from the corresponding Greek letters, and the rest of the characters from Kharoṣṭhī (see 2.3.7) and Aramaic. While composite alphabets are not in principle impossible, as in the example of the Coptic script which supplements the Greek alphabet with six characters from demotic Egyptian, Halévy’s derivation from three separate prototypes is obviously forced.

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⁵⁸ *JASB* 6, 1837, 390.

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⁵⁹ *Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen* 1838, 252.

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⁶⁰ *JA*, ser. 8, vol. 6, 1885, 290ff.; see also *Revue Sémitique* 3, 1895, 256ff. For full references, see n. 77 and section 2.3.6.

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Although the theory of Greek origin won some early followers,⁶¹ it had fallen out of favor until recently, when it was revived by Falk in SAI (109–12 and 338–9). Falk, influenced by the arguments of Halévy, sees Brāhmī as an intentional creation of the time of Aśoka, created on the model of Kharoṣṭhī and Greek. According to him, the formation of Brāhmī was influenced by Greek, particularly in respect to its direction of writing (cf. 2.2.3.2.4), its monumental ductus, the differentiation (in contrast to Kharoṣṭhī) of short and long vowels, and the specific formation of some characters, especially ʘ *tha*, which he connects with Greek *θ* *theta* (SAI 111). Although the arguments for a Greek influence on the general ductus of Brāhmī (cf. n. 61) are plausible, it would seem that Greek had little influence on the specific formation of the Brāhmī characters. The example of *tha* and *theta*, stressed by Falk, is an isolated and exceptional case for which other possible explanations are available (see 2.2.3.3). The development in Brāhmī of a system for the differentiation of vowel quantity can more easily be seen as indigenous, in light of the long-standing Indian tradition of sophisticated phonetic analysis, than as an influence from Greek. Whereas the short/long vowel pairs in Brāhmī are indicated by a complete and regular system of variations of a basic form or diacritic for each vowel, in Greek script they were represented by an entirely different (and defective) system involving distinct and unrelated alphabetic signs (e.g., ε *epsilon*/ η *ēta*). In light of these very different approaches to the notation of vowel quantity, it is doubtful whether Brāhmī derived even the basic concept from a Greek prototype. Thus although it is possible that Brāhmī was influenced by Greek in the formation or development of its superficial aspect, the evidence for an underlying role in the formation of the script itself is not strong.

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⁶¹ See, for example, SAI 109–11. Diringer’s account in *The Alphabet*, 335, of the adherents of the derivation of Brāhmī from Greek is inaccurate and misconstrues the views of some of the persons cited, notably of Émile Senart, who really suggested (in his review of Cunningham’s *Inscriptions of Asoka*, *JA*, ser. 7, vol. 13, 1879, 535) nothing more than an “influence grecque . . . extérieure et secondaire” on the monumental character of the script.

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*2.2.3.2.2 Kharoṣṭhī.* As noted earlier, Falk (SAI 338–9), influenced by Halévy (see also 2.3.8), saw Brāhmī as essentially based on Kharoṣṭhī with a strong secondary influence from Greek; according to him, “haben wir es bei der Brāhmī mit einer Neuentwicklung auf der Basis zweier Schriften zu tun”⁶² (338). If it is true, as now seems nearly certain (see 2.1.2), that Kharoṣṭhī was older than Brāhmī, it can certainly be accepted that the overall graphic system which characterizes both (2.1.3) was adapted from the former to the latter, and in this limited sense Brāhmī can be said to be “derived” from Kharoṣṭhī. But in terms of the actual forms of the characters, the differences between the two Indian scripts are much greater than the similarities (see 2.3.7), and many more of the forms of the Brāhmī characters can be explained by reference to Aramaic and/or other Semitic scripts (2.2.3.2.3–2.2.3.2.5) than to Kharoṣṭhī. Although some of the Brāhmī forms, such as ∧ *ga* and ⊙ *tha*, are explained by Falk (SAI 111) by reference to the corresponding Greek letters (γ *gamma* and θ *theta*; see earlier), the great majority of them can be accounted for by neither Greek nor Kharoṣṭhī.

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⁶² “In Brāhmī we are dealing with a new development on the basis of two scripts.”

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*2.2.3.2.3 South Semitic.* An apparent relationship between Brāhmī and the ancient South Semitic scripts was noted by several early scholars⁶³ who noted similarities between certain Brāhmī letters and the corresponding characters of the Himyaritic inscriptions of South Arabia. A South Semitic prototype for Brāhmī was first proposed by François Lenormant in 1875,⁶⁴ and at greater length by W. Deecke in 1877.⁶⁵ A more plausible argument for a South Semitic (Sabaean) derivation was presented by Isaac Taylor⁶⁶ with a comparative chart (320) of the alphabets concerned.

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⁶³ References given by Albrecht Weber, “Ueber den semitischen Ursprung des indischen Alphabets,” ZDMG 10, 1856, 389–406 (esp. 402–5) = *Indische Skizzen* (Berlin: F. Dümmler, 1857), 127–50 (esp. 145–8).

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⁶⁴ *Essai sur la propagation de l’alphabet phénicien dans l’ancien monde* (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1875), 1.152.

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⁶⁵ “Ueber das indische Alphabet in seinem Zusammenhange mit den übrigen südsemitischen Alphabeten,” ZDMG 31, 1877, 598–612. Deecke proposed to derive both Brāhmī (“Indisch”) and Himyaritic from a hypothetical Ur-South Semitic script, which, in turn, was derived from Assyrian cuneiform. A similar idea was espoused by T. W. Rhys Davids in *Buddhist India* (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1903), 114.

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⁶⁶ *The Alphabet*, II.314–23.

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Among the points argued in favor of the South Semitic hypothesis is, first of all, the direction of writing. South Semitic inscriptions were written from right to left, like other Semitic scripts, but also sometimes in boustrophedon, or, like Brāhmī, from left to right. Second, and more important, a South Semitic prototype for Brāhmī, or a hypothetical common ancestor, would provide plausible prototypes for several of the Brāhmī letters which are most problematic in the North Semitic derivation (2.2.3.2.4). Thus Brāhmī 𑀩 *ba*, for which a North Semitic prototype is problematic, is very much like some Sabaean forms of *bet* such as 𐩨, as given by Taylor in his comparative chart. Likewise Brāhmī 𑀤 *da*, which also presents serious problems in the North Semitic derivation, has a much closer resemblance to such Sabaean forms of *dalet* as 𐩵; Brāhmī 𑀫 *ma* looks like Sabaean 𐩣 *mem*; and so on. According to Taylor, the South Semitic derivation can also be justified on historical and geographical grounds: “[F]rom the 10th to the 3rd century B.C. Yemen was the great central mart in which Indian products were exchanged for the merchandize of the West” (314), so that “there was . . . ample opportunity for the transmission to India of the Sabean alphabet” (315).

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Despite these advantages, the South Semitic hypothesis also has several important weaknesses. First, the argument based on the common direction of writing in Brāhmī and some South Semitic inscriptions does not carry great weight; for, as will be discussed shortly (2.2.3.2.4), the overall importance of the factor of direction of writing has been exaggerated in much of the discussion of this subject. Second, as for the derivation of individual characters, for every case in which South Semitic offers a better prototype, there is at least one other where a North Semitic model is preferable. Brāhmī し *pa*, for instance, is certainly more readily derivable from North Semitic 𐤐 *pe* than from the South Semitic forms of the letter. Finally, the historical arguments are similarly inconclusive, in view of the lingering uncertainty as to the antiquity both of the South Semitic inscriptions⁶⁷ and of Brāhmī itself.

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