Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s1.t2.2

c7.s1.t2.2

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.