Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s3.t1.19

c7.s3.t1.19

To the south and southwest, sporadic examples of Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions were known to Konow (there are no major subsequent discoveries in this area) along the lower Indus as far as Mohenjo-Daro, and in Baluchistan;¹²⁶ and to the southeast, in Kāṅgrā¹²⁷ and in the region around Delhi and Mathurā.¹²⁸ Occasional stray finds of Kharoṣṭhī letters farther to the east and south are not indicative of significant use of the script in those regions. Thus a plaque with a Kharoṣṭhī inscription found at Kumrahār (Patna; CII 2.1, 177–8) is most likely an import from the northwest (CII 2.1, xiv), and the apparent occurrence of a few Kharoṣṭhī letters on the bases of pillars from Bhārhut (Satna Dist., MP) as reported by Cunningham¹²⁹ is of uncertain significance. Still farther afield, the well-known occurrence of the single word *lipikareṇa* in Kharoṣṭhī in three Aśokan inscriptions from Karnataka (see 4.3.1.1 n. 67) is evidently only a scribe’s flourish.¹³⁰