Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s3.t3.2

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 only a secondary position by the side of the Brāhma alphabet even in Northwestern India”¹⁴⁰ are no longer valid in light of subsequent discoveries which have vastly enhanced our understanding of the important historical and cultural role of this script.