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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(OCTOBER, 1895.
lcarning of the Aramæans, in the lower grades of the Persian Civil Service, among the scribes, accountants, treasurers and mintmasters, and this is no more than might be expected, when & race like the Persian suddenly comes into the possession of a very large eropire and becomes the heir of an older civilisation.
Under these circumstances it appears natural to assume that the Persian Satraps carried with them also into India their staff of subordinates, who were accustomed to the use of the Aramean letters and language. And this would fully explain how the Hindus of the IndoPersian provinces were driven to utilise the characters, commonly employed by the scribes and accountants of their conquerors, though they already possessed a script of their own. The Kharôshthi Alphabet would appear to be the result of the intercourse between the offices of the Satraps and of the native authorities, the Indian chiefs and the heads of towns and villages, whom, as the accounts of the state of the Paõjab at the time of Alexander's invasion shew, the Persians left in possession in consideration of the payment of their tribute. The Hindus probably used at first the pure Aramaic characters, just as in much later times they adopted the Arabic writing for a number of their dialects, and they introduced in the course of time the modifications observable in the Kharðshthi Alphabet, for which process the additions to the Arabic Alphabet, employed for writing Hindi, furnish an analogy, perhaps not perfect, but nevertheless worthy of notice.
In support of these conjectural combinations three farther points may be adduced. First, the Kbarðshtht Alphabet is not a pandit's, but a clerk's, alphabet. This appears to me evident from the carsive appearance of the signs, which has been frequently noticed by others; from its (according to Indian views) imperfect vowel-system, which includes no long vowels; from the employment of the anusvåra for the notation of all nasals before consonants; and from the almost constant substitution of single consonants for double ones. The expression of the long vowels by separate signs, which occurs in no other ancient alphabet but the Brahmi Lipi, was no doubt natural and desirable for the phoneticists or grammarians, who developed that alphabet. But it is a useless encumbrance for men of business, whose airn is rather the expeditious despatch of work than philological or phonetic accuracy. Hence, even the Indian clerks and men of business using the Brahmi have never paid much attention to their correct use, though they were instructed by Brahmans in the principles of their peculiar alphabet. If, therefore, these signs, which have only a value for schoolmen, do not occur in the Kharôshthi, the natural inference is that this alphabet was framed by persons who paid regard only to the requirements of ordinary life. The other two peculiarities mentioned, -the substitution of the anusvára for all nasals, standing before consonants, and the substitution of ka for kka, of ta for tta and so forth, and of kha for kkha, of dha for ddha and so forth, - are clearly the devices of clerks, who wished to get quickly through their work. If thus the Kharôshthi appears to be an alphabet, framed with particular regard to the wants of clerks, that agrees with and confirms the assumption, put forward above, according to which it arose out of the official intercourse between the scribes of the Satraps and those of the native chiefs or other authorities.
More important, however, is the second point, which is intimately connected with the details of the derivation of the Kharðshthi. The originals of the Kharðshthi letters are, it seems to me, to be found in the Aramaio inscriptions, incised during the rule of the earlier Akhæmenian kings. The whole ductus of the Kharðshthî with its long verticals or slanting down-strokes is that of the Saqqarah inscription of 482 B. C. and the probably contemporaneous Jarger Teima inscription, which Prof. Euting assigns to circiter 500 B. 0. It is also in these inscriptions that most of the forms occur, which apparently have served as models for the corresponding letters of the Kharôshthi. One or perhaps two seem to rest on forms found in the somewhat later Lesser Teima, Serapeum and Stele Vaticana inscriptions, while three are connected with older letters on the Assyrian weights and the seals and gems from Babylon. Indian Studies, No. III. p. 82.
• Indian Studies, No. III. p. 41f., note 3,
