Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s2.t3.20

c7.s2.t3.20

*2.2.3.2.4 Phoenician.* The possibility of a connection of the Indic scripts with North Semitic writing (see table 2.2) was noted as early as 1821 by Ulrich Friedrich Kopp.⁷⁰ But Kopp’s comparisons (which, to his credit, were presented with the greatest hesitancy and restraint) were based on modern forms of the Indic scripts and hence did not permit of anything like reliable conclusions. The first comprehensive and authoritative treatment of the Semitic hypothesis was Albrecht Weber’s influential “Ueber den semitischen Ursprung des indischen Alphabets” (see n. 63), in which he presented the first detailed comparison of the Phoenician script with early Brāhmī. Although the results were inevitably imperfect,⁷¹ on the whole the argument is reasonably TABLE 2.2. Comparison of the North Semitic and Early Indian Scripts