Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s2.t3.5

c7.s2.t3.5

Although the theory of Greek origin won some early followers,⁶¹ it had fallen out of favor until recently, when it was revived by Falk in SAI (109–12 and 338–9). Falk, influenced by the arguments of Halévy, sees Brāhmī as an intentional creation of the time of Aśoka, created on the model of Kharoṣṭhī and Greek. According to him, the formation of Brāhmī was influenced by Greek, particularly in respect to its direction of writing (cf. 2.2.3.2.4), its monumental ductus, the differentiation (in contrast to Kharoṣṭhī) of short and long vowels, and the specific formation of some characters, especially ʘ *tha*, which he connects with Greek *θ* *theta* (SAI 111). Although the arguments for a Greek influence on the general ductus of Brāhmī (cf. n. 61) are plausible, it would seem that Greek had little influence on the specific formation of the Brāhmī characters. The example of *tha* and *theta*, stressed by Falk, is an isolated and exceptional case for which other possible explanations are available (see 2.2.3.3). The development in Brāhmī of a system for the differentiation of vowel quantity can more easily be seen as indigenous, in light of the long-standing Indian tradition of sophisticated phonetic analysis, than as an influence from Greek. Whereas the short/long vowel pairs in Brāhmī are indicated by a complete and regular system of variations of a basic form or diacritic for each vowel, in Greek script they were represented by an entirely different (and defective) system involving distinct and unrelated alphabetic signs (e.g., ε *epsilon*/ η *ēta*). In light of these very different approaches to the notation of vowel quantity, it is doubtful whether Brāhmī derived even the basic concept from a Greek prototype. Thus although it is possible that Brāhmī was influenced by Greek in the formation or development of its superficial aspect, the evidence for an underlying role in the formation of the script itself is not strong.