Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s2.t3.26

c7.s2.t3.26

Weber’s pioneering efforts were refined in the definitive statement of the North Semitic hypothesis by Georg Bühler in 1895, namely, in his classic *On the Origin of the Indian Brāhma Alphabet* (*OIBA*).⁷³ Bühler compared the early forms of Brāhmī from the Aśokan and other early inscriptions, including the aberrant forms of the Bhaṭṭiprōḷu inscriptions, with the corresponding letters of the North Semitic alphabet of the tenth to eighth centuries B.C. (to which period he attributed the Indian borrowing; see 2.1.2) as found in the early Phoenician inscriptions and other contemporary documents which were then known. He was thereby able to formulate a derivation which improved in several respects upon that of Weber. For example, Bühler gave Brāhmī *ca* as the derivative of *ṣade*, which is obviously preferable to Weber’s *jha*. Likewise Bühler’s *gha* from *ḥet* is clearly better than Weber’s *ca*, as is his *kha* instead of Weber’s *ka* as the derivative of *qoph*.