Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s2.t2.1

c7.s2.t2.1

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