Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s5.t3.4

c7.s5.t3.4

Even in relatively early times we sometimes find Brāhmī²²³ records which are engraved with considerable care and skill—for example, in the Nāsik cave inscriptions and in several of the Mathurā inscriptions (MI §18 and 118). But calligraphic writing proper, that is, writing with a systematically developed decorative component, first begins to appear around the second and third centuries A.D., for example, in the Bijayagaḍh Yaudheya inscription (CII 3, pl. xxxvi.B) in the north and in the inscriptions of the time of the Ikṣvāku kings at Nāgārjunakoṇḍa, Amarāvatī, Jaggayyapeṭa, and so on, in the south. These early calligraphic scripts are principally characterized by various forms and degrees of elongation and elaboration of the vowel diacritic signs, which is to remain the principal technique for calligraphic elaboration through the following centuries. The other major technique of decorative embellishment consists of various creative treatments of the principal consonantal characters themselves, as, for example, in the “box-headed” scripts of central India (see 2.2.5.3) in which all the letters are modeled into harmonious squared and angular forms. This type of embellishment by stylization was also employed in some later calligraphically developed scripts such as Siddhamātṛkā as well as in the “special calligraphic scripts” (see 2.5.3.2), often in conjunction with the technique of diacritic decoration.