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$ 21.)
INDIAN PALEOGRAPHY,
45
wide territory north of the Narmadi, with the exception of Käthiāvā! and northern Gujarat, and which, sprending in the course of time more and more, finally is used in a number of varieties for nenrly all the aryan languages of India. Their origia is to be found in the cursive foring, which first appear in the addition to the Asoka edict VI. of Dhauli, and in a number of signs of the Kälsi version (see above, page 6 f.), and later are found, occasionally or constantly, in some of the Jaina votive inscriptions of the Kaşana period (nee above, Ş 19, A). Their general type is that of a cursive alphabet with signs reduced at the top to the same height, and made thronghout, as mach as possible, equal in breadth. As the occurrence of ancient MSS. and various peculiarities of the letters, such as the formation of wedges out of the Serifs at the ends of the verticals, clearly prove, they were always written with a pen or a brush and ink. Their most important common characteristics are : - (1) The absence of curves at the lower ends of the verticals of A, A, ka, na, &c. (with occasional exceptions for ra); (-) the use of the Serif at - the left down-strokes of kha, ge, and ou; (3) the division of the original vertical of na and of its apper bar; (4) the use of a looped na and of a ta without a lonp; (5) the transformation of the lower portion of ma into a small knob or loup attached to the left of the letter; (6) the shortening of the vertical of la; (7) the turn of the medial i to the left, which is soon followed by the twist of medial i to the right; (8) the development of carves, open to the left, at the end of the originally horizontal medial u; and (9) the use of a curve, open to the right, for medial r.
While all the alphabets represonted in plates IV, V, VI, show these common characteristics or further developments from them, they may be divided, acccording to other peculiarities, into seven larger groups, most of which again comprise several varieties :
(1) The epigraphic North-Indian alphabet of the 4th and 5th eentaries, commonly called the Gupta alphabet, which, according to HOERNLE'S researches, has an eastern and a western variety, among which the second again has two branches, and with the western variety of which the literary alphabet of the Bower MS. and of some other documents from Kashgar is closely connected.
(2) The acute-angled or Siddhamitrkā (?) alphabet with wedges at the verticals of the letters, which is first found in the palm-leaves of Horiuzi, and towards the end of the 6th century in the Mubinäman inscription from Gayā and in the Lakkhamandal Prasasti.
(3) The Nagari with its long-drawn, tailed, letters, and long top-strokes, the first certain traces of which occur in the 7th century.
(4) The Sāradā alphabet, a northern variety of the western Gapta type, first found about A. D. E00.
(5) The eastern Proto-Bengali alphabet with much rounded, cursive letters, and with hooks or hollow triangles at the tops of the verticals, first traceable in the 11th century.
(0) The hooked alphabet of Nepal, [48] which is closely connected with the Proto-Bengali and occurs in MSS. from the 11th centary onwards.
During the 4th and 5th centuries, the rule of these alphabets to the north of the Narmadā is by no means undisputed. In the west we find, as far north as Bijayagn !h (Bhartpur), inscriptions in southern characters, or with an admixture of southern letters (see below, $ 27). In the oth and 7th centuries this mixture no longer occurs. Only the so-called "arrow-head" type (see below, 26, C), the seventh variety ou plates IV-VI, which appears in rather late times in Bengal and Nepal, offers an instance of the importation of a southern script into Northern India.
1 J.ASB. 60, 80 ff.; and LA, 21, 8J f.
