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INDIAN BRANCH
337
Over sixty years ago, R. N. Cust, the then Hon. Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, published an article in the journal of that Society (On the Origin of the Indian Alphabet, J.R.A.S., N.S., XVI, 1884, PP. 325-359). Since then, many new discoveries have been made, and the problem has been discussed in many hundreds of books and articles, and yet, concerning the origin of the Brahmi script, I even now fairly well agree with the first two of his conclusions:
"I. The Indian Alphabet is in no respect an independent invention of the People of India, who, however, elaborated to a marvellous extent a loan, which they had received from others.
"II. The idea of representing Vowel and Consonant Sounds by symbols of a pure alphabetic character was derived from Western Asia beyond any reasonable doubt." (The Indian characters, however, are semi-alphabetic and not pure alphabetic).
INDIAN INSCRIPTIONS
Unquestionably the most copious and important source for the study of the Indian scripts is the epigraphic, and the present knowledge of many periods of the long-forgotten past is also derived mainly from the patient study of the numerous Indian inscriptions during the last hundred years. The great majority of these inscriptions belong to three classes: (1) commemorative, (2) dedicatory, and (3) donative. The first two classes are mostly incised on stone, and they comprise a vast variety of records, from the mere signature of a pilgrim's name to an elaborate panegyrical Sanskrit poem. On the other hand, the donative inscriptions relating to religious endowments or secular donations are mostly engraved on plates of copper, whilst many Indian inscriptions are recorded or iron, gold, silver, brass, bronze, clay, earthenware, bricks, crystals, or even palm leaves and birch bark. The earliest known Indian work in ivory is an inscription at Sanchi dating from the first half of the second century B.C. The languages used in the inscriptions are as varied as the materials on which they were written, Sanskrit, Pali, Sinhalese, Tamil, Bengali, Oriya, Nepali, Telugu, Malayalam,
and others.
Southern India is particularly rich in inscriptions of all kinds, some of which attain extraordinary length. Many thousands of these inscriptions belong to a relatively recent date. Until recently, with the exception of the Asoka inscriptions and the brief dedications of the Bhattiprolu caskets, no important document was attributed to the pre-Christian era, and relatively few inscriptions were considered as earlier than the seventh century A.D.
However, in 1916-17, a Brahmi inscription of the first century B.C. was noticed in the Buddhist cave at Guntapelle in the Kistna district; the year 1923-24 brought to light a Brahmi inscription of about the second century A.D. at Alluru, also in the Kistna district; and, finally, in 1941, members of the Bombay Kannada Research Institute discovered a Prakrit pillar inscription in Brahmi characters of the second century B.c. at Vadgaon-Madhavapur near Belgaum, which is the earliest Brahmanical Prakrit document known to exist in the Bombay Karnatak; see also p. 341.
The earliest extant manuscripts on palm-leaves seem to belong to the fourth century A.D. (for instance, some fragments from Kashgar, in the Godfrey Collection), and to the sixth century (the Horiuzji MS.); the majority, however, belong to the ninth and the following centuries. The oldest manuscript found in the south is dated A.D. 1428, according to Burnell.
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