Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s1.1

c7.s1.1

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.