Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s2.t3.14

c7.s2.t3.14

Among the points argued in favor of the South Semitic hypothesis is, first of all, the direction of writing. South Semitic inscriptions were written from right to left, like other Semitic scripts, but also sometimes in boustrophedon, or, like Brāhmī, from left to right. Second, and more important, a South Semitic prototype for Brāhmī, or a hypothetical common ancestor, would provide plausible prototypes for several of the Brāhmī letters which are most problematic in the North Semitic derivation (2.2.3.2.4). Thus Brāhmī 𑀩 *ba*, for which a North Semitic prototype is problematic, is very much like some Sabaean forms of *bet* such as 𐩨, as given by Taylor in his comparative chart. Likewise Brāhmī 𑀤 *da*, which also presents serious problems in the North Semitic derivation, has a much closer resemblance to such Sabaean forms of *dalet* as 𐩵; Brāhmī 𑀫 *ma* looks like Sabaean 𐩣 *mem*; and so on. According to Taylor, the South Semitic derivation can also be justified on historical and geographical grounds: “[F]rom the 10th to the 3rd century B.C. Yemen was the great central mart in which Indian products were exchanged for the merchandize of the West” (314), so that “there was . . . ample opportunity for the transmission to India of the Sabean alphabet” (315).