Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 62

58
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[MAY, 1919
Bruce Foote, while pointing out that some of the prehistoric potteries contained "ownership-marks", and giving us in one of his plates (No. 47) of his second volume of Prehistoric and Proto-historic Antiquities some interesting pottery "marks", did not think they were worth a passing thought. It was only in 1917 that Mr. Yazdani, while conducting some excavations in Hyderabad cairns, being struck with the notable similarity of some prehistoric pottery marks with the Brahmi script, his memory being still fresh with the inscriptions of the Maski edict, which he had to copy down, undertook a list of these marks which he published in a table as already mentioned. But so much were the Indian antiquarians prepossessed by the idea of the, lateness of Indian script that the thought of its occurring in prehistoric artifacts in India got no place in their minds.and so Mr. Coggin Brown naturally failed to notice that there were not only isolated marks on several but also continuous signs on two which bore his catalogue number. As soon as it was clear to me that definite continuous marks occurred on two Indian Neoliths I at once realised the immense value of these finds on the question of the origin of Indian script, and I lost no time to hasten upstairs to subject these specimens to the sound epigraphic knowledge of the officer in charge, Professor D. R. Bhandarkar. The eminent professor has already been kind enough to refer to these finds and now he deciphered one satisfactorily by finding out that: the signs looked like primitive Brâhmî characters reversed and holding the thing before a mirror gave a reading which we would see has been corroborated by other evidence. The two Neoliths bearing continuous signs come from almost contiguous parts of NorthEastern India, the one from Assam and the other from Bihar.
The first one is a well-polished celt, sharpened at the edge and narrowed near the top in the characteristic manner of specimens from Assam though not formed into well defined shoulders like some other beautiful artifacts of the locality. It bore the Catalogue No. 998 and apparently could not be traced after having been catalogued What was remarkable about the script was a continuous line at the bottom which evidently had run into a perpendicular at the left extreme. This no doubt indicated that the script ran from right to left. It is hardly worth the while to point out that such writing has been considered to be the most ancient form in historical India and also that such specimens of Brâhmî and Kharoshți have been reported from Eran and North-Western India and none from the North-East. Moreover, the continuous line at the bottom naturally reminded me of the plate number XXXIV of Estacio da Viega's Antiguidades monumentales de Algarve figuring an inscription from Fonte Velha near Bensafrim in Bezirk-Lago, Portugal, which our Neolithic signs resemble most in the bold linear type of character measuring alike in both the cases nearly one mm. in length and ending also in a perpendicular at the left side of the line. It did not seem to have become independent of the bottom line or to have developed into the well-marked art of the linear script from Crete, tables of which have been given by Mr. Solomon Reinach in L'Anthropologie. 10 Besides the bottom line and the perpendicular at the left extreme, four distinct signs lying clearly apart from each other may be easily differentiated from each other. It is rather fortunate that within the last ten or twelve years prehistoric palæography is being placed more and more on a very sound footing by a comparative study of the numerous signs unearthed from the Iberian peninsula, the Mediterranean culture area and prehistoric Asia Minor and Egypt. A systematic table of the signs have been given long ago, by Horne in nis Natur-und 10 1902, p. 4 Fig. 2.
9 Vol. IV, p. 273.