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30
INDIAN ANTIQUARY, VOL. XXXIII, 1904; APPENDIX.
[$ 14.
14.- Common characteristios of the ancient inscriptions. The forms of the Brāhmi and Drāvidi, used during the first 600 years, are known at present only from inscriptions on stones, copper-plates, coins, seals and rings, and there is only one instance of the use of ink from the third or second century B. C. The view of the development of the characters during this period is, therefore, not complete. For, in accordance with the results of all paleographic research, the epigraphic alphabets are mostly more archaic than those used in daily life, as the very natural desire to employ monumental forms prevents the adoption of modern letters, and as, in the case of coins, the imitation of older specimens not rarely makes the alphabet retrograde. The occurrence of numerous corsive forms together with very archaic ones, both in the Asoka edicts (see above, 53) and also in later inscriptions, clearly proves that Indian writing makes no exception to the general rule. And it will be possible to use the numerous cursive letters for the reconstruction of the more advanced alphabets, which were employed for manuscripts and for business purposes.
The full recognition of the actual condition of the Indian writing is obscured also by the fact that the inscriptions of the earliest period, with two exceptions, are either in Prākrit or in a mixed language (Gāthā dialect), and that the originals, from which they were transferred to stone or copper, were drafted by clerks and monks who possessed little or no education. In [81] writing Prākrit these persons adopted nearly throughout - (in writing the mixed dialect less constantly) - the practically convenient popular orthography, in which the notation of long vowels, especially of t and ů, and of the Anusvāra, is occasionally neglected as a matter of small importance, and in which double consonants are mostly represented by single ones, non-aspirates are omitted before aspirates, and the Anusvāra is put for all vowelless medial nasals. This mode of spelling continues in the Prākrit inscriptions with great constancy until the second century A. D. The constant doubling of the consonants appears first in a Pāli inscription of Haritiputta Sätakanni, king of Banavāsi, which has been recently found by L. Rice.5 The longer known inscription of the same prince (IA. 14, 331) does not show it. Besides, we find in some other, part.y much older, Prakrit documents, faint traces of the phonetical and grammatical spelling of the Pandits. Thus, the Aboka edicts of Shābbāzgarhi offer some instances of mma (see above, 69, B, 4), the Nāsik inscriptions Nos. 14, 15, and Kadā No. 5, have the word siddka, and Kaņheri No. 14 āyyakena. Such deviations from the rule indicate that the writers had learned a little Sanskrit, which fact is proved also for the writer who drafted the Kālsi edicts by the, for the Pāli absurd, form bamhmane for bambhane (Kälsi edict XIII, 1. 39).
With the exception of the Ghasundi (Nagari) inscription, which contains no word with a double consonant, all the documents in the mixed dialect offer instances of double consonants which sometimes even are not absolutely necessary. Pabhosa No. 1 has Bahasatimittrasa and Kassapiyanan, No. 2 has Tevaniputtrasya, Nāsik No. 5 has siddham, and Kärle No. 21 has Setapharanaputtasya. And the Jaina inscriptions from Mathură furnish numerous analogous cases. The only known Sanskrit inscriptions of this period, the Girnar Prasasti from the reign of Rudradāman and Kanheri No. 11, in general show the orthography approved by the phonologists and grammarians, with a few irregularities in the use of the Anusvära, e. g., pratanain a (Girnār Prasasti, 1. 2), sambamdhão (1. 12), which have been caused by the influence of the popular orthography, but are found in the best MSS. written by Pandits. The orthographic pecularities, just discussed, have therefore nothing to do with the development of the alphabet, but merely show that in ancient, as in modern, India the spelling of the clerks differed from that of the learned Brahmans, and that both methods, then as now, mutually influenced each other and caused irregularities. 1 J.BBRAS. 10, XXIII. See above, & 2, B (end).
B.IS. III", 40–43. • See above, $ 7.
• According to an impression and a photograb kindly sent by Ms. L. RICE. • B.ASRWI. 4. pl. 45 and 52; 5, PL 51.
EI. 2, 242; B.ASRWI. 4, pl. 52 and 64. • EI, 1, 571 ff. ; 2, 195 ff.
B.ASRWI. 2, pl. 14; 5, RL 51.
