Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s3.t3: 2.3.3 Uses of Kharoṣṭhī
Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s3.t3
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2.3.3 Uses of Kharoṣṭhī
c7.s3.t3.1
In South Asia, the Kharoṣṭhī script is preserved principally in inscriptions, mostly on stone but also on metal and other materials, numbering in the hundreds. The vast majority of these are Buddhist records, mostly concerning pious donations and foundations. Kharoṣṭhī was also extensively used in the coin legends of the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, and other foreign rulers of India, as well as of some indigenous polities such as the so-called tribal republics of the Audumbaras, Kuṇindas, and Rājanyas. Kharoṣṭhī was rarely used by itself on coins; most specimens are biscriptual (or even triscriptual), in combination with legends in Greek and/or Brāhmī (2.3.1).
c7.s3.t3.2
Kharoṣṭhī is also well attested, in relics from central Asia, in nonmonumental functions. In the Niya documents (2.3.1) it functions as an administrative script, while the manuscript of the *Dharmapada* attests to its literary usage.¹³⁹ Moreover, the fact that some Chinese Buddhist texts reflect originals in the Gāndhārī language (see 3.1.4.2.1 n. 23), and hence, presumably, in Kharoṣṭhī script, confirms that Kharoṣṭhī was in its day a major vehicle of culture in the Buddhist circles of northwestern India. Thus the judgments of earlier scholars such as Bühler, which were based mainly on the somewhat misleading evidence of the bilingual coin legends and the then fairly sparse repertoire of inscriptions and other Kharoṣṭhī records, to the effect that “Kharoṣṭhī held always . . . only a secondary position by the side of the Brāhma alphabet even in Northwestern India”¹⁴⁰ are no longer valid in light of subsequent discoveries which have vastly enhanced our understanding of the important historical and cultural role of this script.
c7.s3.t3.3
¹⁴⁰ OKA 44 = OIBA 92; cf. also OIBA 51.
Linked texts (1)
- Patna Dharmapada — Prakrit