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INDIAN BRANCH
341
Though the Asoka script is still imperfect, it is in comparison with the few earlier inscriptions, which were roughly and rudely written, without long vowels or combinations of consonants, a great improvement; the long vowels are marked and there are various combinations of consonants. However, the short vowel a was inherent in every consonant unless the latter was associated with another vowel sound.
(3) Early Kalinga Type-the "Dravidi" Script
Kalinga is an ancient region on the east coast of southern India, lying between the Mahanadi in the north, the Godavari river in the south, the eastern Ghats and the sea. When Asoka ascended the throne, Kalinga was an important independent kingdom, but Asoka conquered it in 262 B.c. This event brings into the picture non-Aryan India south of the Vindhyas, which had hitherto been a terra incognita. Soon after Asoka's death, Kalinga regained its freedom from Magadha, its power had greatly increased, and about 150 B.c. Kharavela, king of Kalinga, claimed to have made two successful invasions, advancing the second time as far north as the Ganges. This story is related in the "Elephant Cave" inscription.
The "Elephant Cave" inscription, attributed to about 150 B.C., represents the early Kalinga type of the Brahmi character.
The inscriptions on the reliquary vessels from a Buddhist stupa at Bhattiprolu in Kistna district of the Madras presidency, represent a still earlier variety, called by Buehler Dravidi, and attributed by him to about 200 B.C. The type, on the whole, seems to agree with the southern form of the Asoka inscriptions, but it contains, according to Buehler, certain more archaic features, amongst them the following: (1) three signs, that is, dh, d and bh, are in the position of a script running from right to left; (2) three signs, those for the sounds e, j and sh, are more archaic than the forms of the Eran coin (belonging to the fourth or third century B.C.) or the Asoka inscriptions (third century B.C.); (3) two signs (/ and cerebral /) resemble early Semitic forms; (4) one new sign, gh, was derived from an early form of g. All these peculiar features induced Buehler to conclude that whatever the age of these inscriptions, the "Dravidi" alphabet was separated from the main stock of the Brahmi character by the fifth century B.C. at the latest.
"This is undoubtedly the reason why so many archaic forms are noticed in the few inscriptions so far known in the Dravidi script. The development of forms after separation could not be so fast in Dravidi as in the regular Brahmi..." (Dr. N. P. Chakravarti). Over fifty short inscriptions, engraved on rocks at natural rock-shelters in South India, especially in the districts of Madura and Tinnevelly, are written in this script. Some are attributed to the third century B.c. (the Mamandur inscription), others to about 200 B.C. (the Bhattiprolu inscriptions) or to the first century (the Hathibada and Ghosundi inscriptions), but Dr. R. E. M. Wheeler's dating ("ANCIENT INDIA," 1946) of the eighteen graffiti found in the 1945-excavation at Arikamedu, near Pondicherry, on the tropical Coromandel coast, in the first or second centuries A.D., is the only one based on safe archeological ground.
