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34
INDIAN ANTIQUARY, VOL. XXXIII, 1904; APPENDIX,
[$ 16, C.
served ; and this circumstance must have contributed to efface or to modify the use of the local varieties. Most of Asoka's governors will, no doubt, have been sent from Magadha, the home of the Maurya race, and many will have been transferred in the course of their service from one province to another. Those acquainted with the conditions of the Civil Service in the Native States of India, which still preserve the ancient forms common to the whole of Asia, will regard it as probable that the governors, on taking charge of their posts, imported their subordinates, or at least some of them, be it from their native country or from the districts which they formerly governed. The case of Pada, the writer of the Siddāpara edicts, confirms this inference. As he knew the Kharoshi, he probably had immigrated, or been transferred, to Maisūr from the north of India.
In spite of these unfavourable conditions it is possible to distinguish in the writing of the Asoka edicts at least two, perhaps three, local varieties. First, there is a northern and a southern one, for which, as in the case of the later alphabets, the Vindhya or, as the Hindus say, the Narmadā, forms the dividing line. The southern variety is most strongly expressed in the Girnår and Siddāpura edicts, less clearly in the Dhauli and Jaugada edicts, by differences in the signs for A, Ā, kha, ja, ma, ra, sa, the medial i, and the ligatares with ra (see below, under C, D). A comparison of the characters of the most closely allied northern and southern inscriptions confirms the assumption that the differences are not accidental. If the characters of the Siddapura edicts do not always agree with those of Girpār, [35] the discrepancies will have to be ascribed to the northern descent of the writer Pada or to his service in a northern office.
Even the writing in the northern versions is not quite homogeneous. The pillar edicts of Allahabad, Mathia, Nigliva, Paderia, Radhia, and Rāmpurvā, form one very closely connected set, in which only occasionally minute differences can be traced, and the edicts of Bairāt No. I., Sahasrām, Barābar, and Säñci, do not much differ. A little further off stand the Dhauli separate edicts (where edict VII, has been written by a different band from the rest), the DelhiMirat edicts, and the Allahabad Queen's edict, as these show the angular da. Very peculiar and altogether different is the writing of the rock edicts of Kālsī, with which some letters on the coins of Agathocles and Pantaleon (but also some in the Jaagada separate edicts) agree. Perhaps it is possible to speak also of a north-western variety of the older Maurya alphabet.
C. - The radical signs or Mātrkās. Signs beginning with verticals show already in the Aśoka edicts occasionally a thickening or a very short stroke (Serif) at the upper end, as in cha (pl. II, 14, II), pa (28, VII); compare the cases noted EI. 2, 448, and B.ASRSI, 1, 115.
(1, 2) In addition to the eight forms of 4, A, given on page 6 above, the plate shows a ninth in col. Xl. with an open square at the top (compare ma, 32, XI, XII); a tenth, with the angle separated from the vertical, occurs in No. 1 of the Siddāpura inscriptions, edict I, line 2, 3. The forms with the bent vertical (cols. VII, XI) have been caused by writing the apper and lower halves of the letter separately. The addition of the stroke, marking the length of the vowel, to the right top of the vertical (cols. VIII, IX), is a peculiarity of Girnār.
(3) The forms of I in cols. III, IV, are the common ones; that in col. X, which agrees with the I of the Gupta period and later types, is rare. (4) The rare 1, which, as may be inferred from the Gayā alphabet of the masons, existed already in the 3rd century B. C., occurs also in the Mahābodhi-Gayā inscriptions, pl. 10, Nos. 9, 10, where CUNNINGHAM reads Im, because it appears in the representative of the Sanskrit Indra. Though this reading is possible, I consider it improbable, as it would be necessary to assume for I & zot traceable form, 1 Compare B.IS. 1114, 38 ff.
The bracketed Arabic figures of section C. Correspond with those of plate II ; for $ 16, C to E, compare also B.IS. ILIS, 58 f.
