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$15.)
INDIAN PALEOGRAPHY.
31
A second peculiarity, found in many inscriptions in Prākrit and in the mixed dialect, is the frequent erroneous employment of the signs for the sibilants. In the Asoka edicts of Kalsi, of Siddapura, and of Bairāt No. II, on the Bhattiprolu vases, in the cave inscriptions of Nāgårjani and of Rāmnăth, and in the Mathurā inscriptions of the Kuşana period, nay even in the two oldest Ceylonese inscriptions, sa or sa are used often for sa, and sa for sa, and sa for sa and $a. The reasons for this promiscuous use of the sibilants are, first, the circumstance that the school alphabet, which the clerks learned, was originally intended for Sanskrit and contained more sibilants than the ancient vernaculars possessed, and secondly, the negligent pronunciation of the classes destitute of grammatical training. The western and southern Prākrits very probably possessed, then as now, both the palatal and the dental sibilants, and it was probably the custom, as is done also in our days, to exchange the two sounds in the same words. The natural consequence was that the feeling for the real value of the signs for áa and sa disappeared among the Prākrit-speaking classes, while the ga of their school-alphabet, for which there was no corresponding sound in their vernaculars, must have appealed to them as a sign suitable to express sibilance. The Sanskrit inscriptions of all centuries, especially the land-grants which were drafted by common clerks, the MSS, of works written in the modern Präkrits, and the documents from [32] the offices of modern India, with their countless mistakes in the use of the sibilants, offer abundant proof for the correctness of this explanation of the errors in the old inscriptions. The explanation is also confirmed by the occasional occurrence of na' for na, - once in the separate edicts of Dhauli and once of Jaugada, -though na alone is permissible for their dialect. In these cases, too, the error seems to have been caused by the fact that the school alphabet contained both na and na. The clerks, who had learned it, each made once a slip, and put in the, for them, redundant sign. The different opinion, according to which the exchange of the sibilants in the Asoka edicts indicates that the values of the Brāhma signs were not completely settled in the third century B. C., rests on the, now untenable, assumption that the Brāhmi was elaborated, not for writing Sanskrit, bnt for the Präkrit dialects.
16. The varieties of the Brāhmi and Drüvidi in Plates II. and III. Plates II. and III. show the following fifteen scripts of the first period :
(1) The variety of the Eran coin, running from the right to the left (pl. II, col. I), which probably dates from the 4th century B. C. 1 B.IS. III", 43, note 3.
C.IA(CII. 1), pl. 14.
* CIA (CII. 1), pl. 15. • B.ASRSI. 1, 128, note 45 ; 129, note 33.
* S.IP. 1, 83 ff. ; B.ESIP. 2, note 1. 6 Preparation of the Plates :
PLATE II. Col. I; drawn according to a caste of the Eran coin; compare C.CAL. pl. 11, No. 18 : A from Patna real, C.ASR. 15, pl. 2.
Cole, II, III : cuttings from facsimile of Kalei, EI. , 447 ff. Cols. IV, V; cuttings from facsimile of Delhi-Sivälik, TA. 13, 806 ff.
Cola. VI, VII ; cuttings from facsimiles of Jaagada, B.ASRSI. 1, pl. 67, 68, 69: 20, VI, from Radhia, EI. 2. 245 ff.; and 44, VII, drawn according to impression of Sahasram.
Cols. VIII-X; outtings from facsimiles of Gimnár, EL 2, 447 ff. : 34, ra, between VII, VIII," from Ruppath, IA. 6, 156.
Cols. XI, XII; outtings from facsimiles of Siddapara, EI. 3, 184 ff.: 44, XII, drawn according to impression of Bairāt, No. I; 45, XI, According to faosimile of Bharahut, ZDMG, 40, 58 ff.
Cola. XIII-XV; outtings from facsimiles in EI. 2 329 ff. Col. XVI; traced from the facsimile in J.ASB. 56, 77, pl. 5 a. Col. XVII; outtings from facsimilo in IA. 20, 361 ff.
Col. XVIII; traced fron. the facsimile in IA. 14, 189: 6 from facsimile of Bharahut, No. 98, ZDMG. 40, 68: and 41 from impression of Sanoi Stupa I, No. 199.
Col. XIX ; cuttings from facsimile in EI. 2, 240 ff. Col. XX; cuttings from facsimiles in EI. 1, 393, No. 39, and EI. 2, 195, No. 1.
Cols, XXI, XXII; drawn according to CUNNINGHAM's photograph of the Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela, Cols. XXIII, XXIV; cuttings from faosimiles in B.ASRWI. 5, pl. 51, Nos. 1, 2.
PLATE III. Cols. I, II; outtings from facsimiles in EI. 2, 199, Nos, 2 and 5, and CUNNINGHAM's photograph of the ors well inscription : compare C.ASR. 20, pl. 5, No. 4. - (Note continued on the next page.)
