Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s1.t3.5

c7.s1.t3.5

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.