Indian Antiquary Vol 35

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 15

JANUARY, 1906.) KHAROSTRA AND THE KHAROSTRI WRITING.
pretensions and bringing the two equivalents together in one, which, by its greater comprehensiveness, is so much the more authentic. Khotan and Kashgar are certainly situated in the zone of the Pien-yi, the border-barbarians settled on the frontiers of India and of China, in those undefined regions which have the common characteristic of being open to the competing influences of China, India and Persia without yielding to them, regions which we can include with tolerable correctness in the “Turkestan" of modern geography. India, Kharoştra, China, these are the three great divisions of the Buddhist world, and study of the traditional notions on writing confirms this statement. In vain did the redactor of the Lalitavistars enjoin belief in a supposed list of sixty-four scripts which the Buddha claimed to know without having studied them, to the great confusion of the professors of his century. The schools in which the real characters were studied prudently set this list aside without discussion, and only three categories of writings were recognised by them: the Fan (Brāhmi), written from left to right; the Kia-lou (an abbreviation of K'ia-lou-cho-ti, Kharostri), written from right to left; and lastly the Chinese, written downwards. Each character has its sacred sponsor; the god Far (Brahona) created the first; the rşi (sien-jen) K'ia-lou (an abridged forin of K'ia-lou-cho-tch'a : Kharoştha) created the second ; lastly, Ts'ang-hie created the third. The first work in which I found this classification of the scripts, with the names of their inventors, was the valuable catalogue of the Tripitaka compiled by Seng-yeou towards the year 520 : Tchou-san-tsang ki-tsi [658] (Nanjio, 1476; Tôk, ed. XXXVIII. 1, p. 36). The Siddham (Si-tan) scbools, which devote themselves to the mystic study of the Sanskrit characters, repeat and perpetuate this division into three. I found it again, among others, in the Si-tan-tsang, Ch. I. p. 16; in the Si-tan san-mi-tchao, Ch. I. p. 36; in the Si-tan-tseu ki-tche-nan-tch'ao, Ch. I. p. 4a. Thus the Kharostri character takes the same place among writings as Kharoạtra in geography: it is the halting-place, the stage between India and China.
The use of the word Kharoşţra marks a phase in the Asiatic movement: the conversion of the Yue-tchi to Indian Buddhism opened the whole of Central Asia to Hindu expansion, from the frontiers of Persia to the western bank of the Hoang-ho. The India of the Sanskrit tongue, brought abruptly into relations with new countries of whose existence she was hardly aware, learned new names for them, either invented by herself or adopted according to her fancy. But the India of the Brahmans scornfully refused to annex these barbarous lands, these countries of Mleccbas; taking her script as her flag, so to speak, the Brāhmi script, which she professed to have received from the god Brahma himself, she set it up as a symbol of perfection against the vulgar character of Kharoştra, the Kharoştri. The prejudice implanted by Brahmanic superiority appears clearly in a Buddhist work, the Vibhāşi-Castra, translated in 383 by Sangha-po-teng (Nanjio, II. 54). The anthor teaches that there should be a gradual progress through each one of the bhūmis in due order, and adds, by way of comparison : "Even so, it is from study of the Brāhmi (fan) writing that one advances with greater speed in the study of the Kharoştri (Kia-lou); it is not by studying Kharoştri writing that one advances more speedily in the study of the Brāhmi." (Pi-po-cha-loun, Oh. XI., Nanj. 1279; Tôk. ed. XXII. 9, p. 67). The same train of thought, accompanied by the same comparison, is to be found in the corresponding passage of the Abhidharma-vibhāşa-castra, translated by Buddhavarnan between 425 and 440 (Ngo-pi-tan pi-po-cha-loun, Ch. XI., Nanj. 1264 ; Tôk. ed. XXI. 10, p. 12b), and of the Abhidharma-mabā-vibhāçã-cāsta, translated by Hionen-tsang13) (Ngo-pi-ta- o-ta-pi-pocha-loun, Ch. LXXXII., Nanj. 1263; Jap. ed. XXII. 4, p. 26). The Vibhāşa-cāstra nga in brings us back, with a mention of the Kharo trī writing, to the same period as the Avatamsaka-sutra and the Lalitavistars; indeed, it passes for the work of the 500 Arhats summoned together in council by Kanişka (Hiouen-tsang. Vic. p. 95; Mémoires, I. 177).
An interesting gloss on the passage in the Abhidharma-vibhaga-castra is given by Hiouen-ying in his Yi-trie-king-yin-yi, Ch. XVIII.: “Kia-lou. The correct expression is K'ta-lou-cho-tch'a =
13 Hionen-tuang, a more scrupulous translator than his predecessors, writes, instead of the shortened form t'ia-lou, the word k'ia-low-cho-tcha, Kharootha.