Indian Antiquary Vol 21

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 41

FEBRUARY, 1892.)
DATE OF THE BOWER MANUSCRIPT.
35
tyáyötpannaka, l. 9, again with the vowels & and 8, and side by side with the old form in lápayét, 1. 18, grámayor, 1. 27, yo, 1. 25, yé, 1. 27, etc. These are all the instances of the occurrence of the transitional form that I have been able to discover among the 35 inscriptions in the North-Western (Gupta) alphabet, published by Mr. Fleet.
Contemporary with them are the following instances of the use of the modern cursive form. In the Majhgawâm inscription of Hastin, of 510 A.D. (Fleet, p. 166), it occurs in the words chhréyé, l. 14, yo, 1. 16, púniyeshu, 1. 17, yé, 1. 18, again with the vowels, é and 6, and side by side with the old form in the words anvayopablogyas, 1. 10, yo, 1. 11, ahayo, 1. 18.16 The transitional form also occurs in the word abhivriddhayé, 1. 7.
Now as to the conclusione that follow from the above statistics, note, in the first place, the extreme rarity of the transitional and modern cursive forms, as well as the peculiar circumstances under which alone they occur. And here mark the following four points:
(1) They occur only in a small proportion of inscriptions. Of course, the only inscriptions with which we are here concerned are those that ase more or less exclusively the old form. Those that already use the transitional or modern cursive forms exclusively are outside the question; so are, of course, all those that are not written in some variety or other of the NorthWestern alphabet. Now there are 35 inscriptions of the former description in Mr. Fleet's Volume III. of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum. To these may be added a few others, such as the Toramana inscription in the Epigraphia Indica, Vol. I, p. 238, and the Kumâra Gupta seal in the Journal, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LVIII. p. 88. Among these there are only ten inscriptions, a little more than one-fourth, that exhibit the occasional use of the transitional and modern cursive forms at all. The rest use exclusively the old form.
(2) The transitional and modern cursive forms occur, in that one-fourth of inscriptions, exclusively in connection with the vowels & or 0.17 With all other vowels, i, e., in every other case, the old form is used.
(3) Even in connection with the vowels and o, the transitional and modern cursive forms are not obligatory, but optional. In fact, even with those vowels, the old form is used more commonly than the transitional and modern cursive forms. On the whole the former is used twice as often as the latter.
(4) of the two cursive forms, the transitional and the modern, the former is used much more frequently than the latter (viz., transitional: modern = 13:4).
In the second place, note that the period during which the sporadic use of the transitional and modern cursive forms occurs, is a comparatively well defined one. Its termini, so far as the evidence of the available inscriptions goes, are from 371 A. D. to 533 A. D., or in round numbers from 370 to 540 A. D., i. e., 170 years. Or, if we omit the very early case of the Bijayagadh inscription, of 371 A. D., as perhaps of a doubtful character, the transition period extends from about 400 to 540 A.D., that is, 140 years. Antecedent to this period, we find the old form of ye in undisputed possession of the field, and subsequent to it, the cursive form of ya is in equally undisputed possession.18
Now it appears to me that from these facts there is but one conclasion, to which one is irresistibly driven. It is this, that there is here disclosed to us evidence of the actual point in time, when the invention, so to speak, of the cursive form of ya was made, or, to speak more precisely, the application of it to the non-conjunet ya. For to suit the case of the conjunct or under-written ya, the cursive form had been long before invented and exclusively employed. But to the non-conjunct ya, it only began to be applied about 400 A. D. At first it was only
16 In these cases the peculiarity of the form is also noted by Mr. Fleet, p. 106.
1. Probably it would also be used with the vowels ai and au ; though no instance happens to occur in the existing inscriptions.
18 The single cicoption is the Asirgadh seal, of about 565 A. D.; and here there are probably peculiar reasons to account for it.