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INDIAN ANTIQUARY, VOL. XXXIII, 1904; APPENDIX.
[$ 1.
Besides the brahmi or bambhi, which is the parent of all the still existing alphabets of India, two more can be identified with known scripts. The kharosthi or kharofthi is, as the Fawanshalin states, the writing running from the right to the left, invented by one Kharostha, "Ass-lip," and is the same character which European scholars formerly used to call Bactrian, Indo-Bactrian, Bactro-Pali, Ariano-Pali, &c. The draviḍi or damili of the lists is very [2] probably the partly independent variety of the Brahmi, which recently has become known through the relic vessels from the Stúpa of Bhattiprola in the Kistna district.3 Besides, the name puskarasari or pukkharasariya is certainly historical, as it is evidently connected with the nomen gentile Puskarasādi or Pauskarasadi (with the Northern Buddhists Puskarasari) by which one or several ancient teachers of law and grammar are mentioned in Panini's grammar, Apastamba's Dharmasutra, and other works. It appears not incredible that a member of the family of Puskarasad may have invented a new alphabet or modified an existing one. The list of the Jainas includes also the name yanaṇāliyā or yavaṇāniya, which is identical with yavanāni, "the writing of the Yavanas or Greeks," of Panini (traditional date about B. C. 350), early acquaintance of the Hindus with the Greek alphabet may have been brought about by the expedition of Skylax to North-Western India in B. C. 509, or by the fact that Indian and Gandharian troops took part in Xerxes' war against Greece, and even by an ancient commercial intercourse. At all events, finds of Indian imitations of Attic drachmes with Greek inscriptions tend to prove the use of the Greek alphabet in North-Western India before the time of Alexander.
An
As some names of the Jaina list are thus shown to be ancient by the results of epigraphic researches and by Panini, as well as by the agreement of the independent tradition of the Northern Buddhists, the list is not without historical value. And it may be considered at least highly probable that a fairly large number of alphabets was known or used in India about B. C. 300. The exact number, 18, which the Jainas mention, must however be taken merely as conventional, as it frequently occurs in traditional statements.
An extract from the lost Dretivada of the Jainas also gives some further account of the ancient Brahmi. It states that this alphabet contained only 46 radical signs, instead of the usual number of 50 or 51. The letters intended are without a doubt: A, A, I, I, U, U, E, AI, 0, 4U (10), Am, Ah; ka, kha, ga, gha, na, ca, cha, ja (20), jha, na, ta, tha, da, dha, na, ta, tha, da (30), dha, na, pa, pha, ba, bha, ma, ya, ra, la (40), va, sa, sa, sa, ha, la; while the matras R, R, L, L, and the ligature kea, which in later times was often erroneously considered a mātṛkā, were excluded. The four liquid vowels are wanting also in the alphabet of the Lalitavistara, and in that of the modern elementary schools. In the latter the instruction is based on the so-called Barakhaḍt (Skt. drädaśākṣari), a table of the combinations of the consonants with the twelve vowels mentioned above, e. g., ka, ka, to kam, kah. The antiquity of the Barakhaḍi, which from its Mangala Om namaḥ siddham is at present sometimes called Siddhākṣarasamāmnāya or Siddhamätṛka, is attested by Hui-lin (A. D. 788-810), who mentions it as the first of the twelve fan or 'cycles' (evidently Hinen Tsiang's twelve chang)10 with which the Hindu boys began their studies. Further evidence for the omission of the vowels R, R, L, L is furnished by Hiuen Tsiang's remark that the Indian alphabet of his time contained 47 letters (the last one being probably the ligature kea), and by the fragments of the incomplete alphabet of Aśoka's stone-masons at Gaya,12 which may be restored as follows: 4, 7, 1, *I, U, U, E, *AI, *O, AU (10), *Am or dḥ, ka, "kha, "ga, "gha, na, "ca, cha, ja, jha (20), *ña, *ta,
I BOR, 1, 59. 2 Comp. WZKM. 9, 66, and B.IS. III, 118 f. Mahabhagya 2, 220 (KIELHORN).
B. V. HEAD, Cat. of Greek Coins: Attics, p. XXXI. f., pp. 25-27.
Sansk. text, Bibl. Ind. 145; LEFMANN, 127.
10 Biyuki 1, 78 (BEAL); ST. JULIEN, Mémoires des pèlerias Bonddhiques 1; 72, and note. 11 Siyuki 1, 77.
11 B.IS. III3, 31.
BI. 2, 329. Herodotus, VII, 65, 66. W.IS. 16, 281.
• B.IS, III 2, 30.
