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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ NOVEMBER, 1924
mention of his theory in his Pre-historic Arts and Orafts of India (Journal of the Department of Letters, Caloutta University, Vol. III, 1920) and in his paper on Pre-historic Writing in India and Europe (JASB., Vol. XVII, 1921, No. 4) published long before Mr. Chanda's criticism. We should, however, add that though Mr. Chanda also shares the view that the letters inscribed on the celt are Arabic integers, he has not yet been able to explain away the presence of the underline nor the absence of hyphons or dots, which one would naturally expect between the integers indicating the day, month, and year, if the letters gave an English date. But while Mr. Chanda's criticism on this inscribed stone has added little to our knowledge on the subject, his criticism on the other inscribed stone is quite unconvincing. This is described as a piece of earthy hematite, rubbed and scraped. It is shaped like the palm of the right hand and is scratched with three letters only and was found in an old Neolithic settlement near Ranchi. Prof. Bhandarkar expressed the following opinion on this stone -
"It is faintly scratched with three letters only, two of which bear a fairly good resemblance to those of the Brahmi lipi of the Asoka period. These were the letters at the ends, one of which was ma and the other ta. The middle letter, as it stood, could not be read for a long time. Then it occurred to me that the letter ta, evidently in & reversed form, and the other viz., ma, must remain the same even when it is reversed. Might not the middle letter similarly present & reversed form! I at once held the neolith before a mirror, and to my agreeable surprise found that the middle letter came fairly close to the Abokan d. As all the letter are reversed, the inscription has to be read from right to left and reads accordingly ma-d-ta."
A comparison of these with the Asokan letters on Buhler's palæographic chart (Tafel II) will at once convince any scholar as to the substantial agreement of the letters. Mr. Chanda himself agrees that one of the decipherable letters is reverse ta. But he objects to the reading of one of the letters as ma, because this type of ma with one straight and another hooked side is unknown elsewhere.' But though it is sometimes found that the form of certain letters survives to ages separated by millenia, it would be idle to suppose that all the letters would maintain their form in alphabets, which are separated by thousands of years. A glance at the plates of Bahler's palæography will disclose the absurdity of such a view. When we find letters changing their forms so fundamentally in a few hundred years, it will be. I think. extremely unreasonable to be surprised by the fact that this particular ma shows a less hooked sido than has hitherto been found.
Prof. Bhandarkar has also utilised the recent discovery of writing on the pottery discovered by Mr. Yazdani in the excavations of the pre-historic cairns in the Nizam's Dominions. Mr. Yazdani bas discovered similar letters on the pre-historic pottery in the Madras Museum, and it has been found that at least five of these marks are identical with the letters of the endlieat Brahmi script. Mr. Chanda does not contest the reading of these letters, but simply observes that the practice of erecting megalithic monuments to the dead still survives in certain localities in India and in the south no copper or bronze age intervenes between the Neolithic and the Iron ages. But Mr. Chanda would have added strength to his criticism if he had shown that the practice of building this particular type of cairn still survives in the Nizam's Dominions, or that the custom prevailed in the historical period in these localities. Without these facts his criticism loses force; more so, when there are other scholars and students of the pre-historic period who would refer them at the latest to 1500 B.C. . To sum up the recent discussions of the origin of the Indian Alphabet, we find that Prof. Bhandarkar has succeeded in further discrediting the Semitic theory of Bühler, by showing that writing was known to the Vedic Aryans long before the time of Megha, king of Moab
