Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s3.t2.5

c7.s3.t2.5

Kharoṣṭhī continued to be the principal script of the northwest in the following centuries, flourishing during the so-called foreign period of the reigns of the Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian, Indo-Parthian, and Kuṣāṇa kings from the first century B.C. to the second century A.D. But the script appears to have fallen out of general use in South Asia itself by sometime in the third century A.D. or shortly thereafter. The latest datable inscription in Kharoṣṭhī is probably Skārah Ḍherī (CII 2.1, 124–7), apparently dated in the year 399 of an unspecified era, usually presumed to be the "Old Śaka" era, which would put the date of the inscription around the middle of the third century A.D.¹³⁵ Two other Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions from Jamālgaṛhī and Hashtnagar (CII 2.1, 110–3 and 117–9) are dated in the years 359 and 384, presumably of the same era, confirming that the script was still in use around the period in question.