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THE ALPHABET The oldest work of historical nature was written in the fourteenth century. Some ancient documents belong to the twelfth-fifteenth centuries A.D).
A peculiar feature of the Newari script, named "the hooked alphabet" by Buehler, are little hooks attached to the letters, which according to this authority and Bendall, prove the influence of the Bengali script. The Cambridge MS. No. 1691, of A.D. 1179, seems to be the oldest extant document written in this script.
"Arrow-head" Type Another ancient script of similar origin is represented in a few later Bengali and Nepali inscriptions written in an "arrow-head" type. Some scholars, such as Bendall, identified it as the Bhaishuki lipi, mentioned by the Arabian scholar Biruni (973-1048). This character scems to have been confined to eastern India and to have been an offshoot of a local variety of the eastern Brahmi script.
B. H. Hodgson, Sarat Chandra Das and other scholars mention other, mostly ornamental, scripts of eastern India, used also in Nepal and Tibet, but little is known about their origin and development.
Modern North Indian Scripts NORTH-EASTERN VARIETIES
The many scripts employed nowadays in northern India have descended from the characters already mentioned, but their exact "genealogical tree" and their inter-relations have not as yet been established. We must
এতক্ষশ বড় ভাইঁ মাঠে ছেল। যখন সে বাড়ীর কাছে এল, তখন নাচ গাওনা শুনতে পেলে
Truto oleh go--Tetisch-sinos Byzy? Tropa-PRTTAS: Tazy Ori anty-yog'
Fig. 163 Specimens of Bengali script, as employed in print (t) and current hund (2)
take into consideration that these modern scripts are essentially current hands, used for daily purposes, and for the majority of them we only know the last stage, that is, the forms employed in recent times.
