Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s1.t2.3

c7.s1.t2.3

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.