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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
146
OLD BRAHMI INSCRIPTIONS
say precisely how many vowel-letters were incised in each row That the vowel-signs were not separately shown and that, at least, these vowelletters, ā, i, ē, 16, ū, e and 0, were incised in each row may be taken for granted. In the texts of the old Brāhmi inscriptions, we have the use of the following vowel-letters and vowel-signs :
(1) . Vowel-letters--a, ā, i, u, e, ai ( ? ), and o; (2) Vowel-signs for ā, i, i, u, ü, e and o
Precisely from what period of time the Brāhmi alphabet was adapted to the needs of Sanskrit language we do not know. If Mr. Jayaswal's "Sunga Inscription of Ayodhya” may be presumed to have been incised actually during the reign of Puşya mitra, or, at least, during the Sunga reign, the second century B. C. is the earliest period to which the date of a Sanskrit record in Brāhmi characters can be pushed. But the Junāgad inscription of Rudradāman I (circa 150 A. D.) is certainly the earliest known lengthy Sanskrit royal record in Brāhmi characters.
In accordance with a statement in the Artha-Sāstra of KautilyaKautalya, the orthography of royal writs (in Sanskrit) comprised some sixty-three letters. The commentator accounts for this total by the summation of twenty-two letters for representing the vowel-sounds and forty-one for representing the consonant-sounds. Thus the dictum in the Artha-Šāstra might be taken to imply that, at the time of its compilation, twenty-two was the conventional maximum of the total of vowel-letters required for orthography of royal writs in Sanskrit). But, in reality, Kautilya-Kantalya thought not so much of the orthography of the royal writs as of the letters, signs and notations of Sanskrit phonology. The notations required for representing nine pluta-svaras were quite out of place in the general orthography of Sanskrit royal writs. Leaving aside the nine pluta-svaras, we get thirteen as the conventional maximum total of Sanskrit vowels. It is impossible to think that the orthography of the Tattva-Gumphā table comprised so many letters as were required to represent all the thirteen Sanskrit vowels. Here the important inquiry is whether this orthography included in it the letters required for representing the two dipthongs, ai and au, or
1. Artha-Šāstra, II, 9. 28 : Akäradayo varnäh trişastih. 2. Artha-Šāstra of Kautalya, edited by Ganapati Sastri, Part I. p. 170.
3. Ganapati Sastri's edition of the Artha-Sāstra, Part I, p. 170 ; Dirghāļ svarūņām tatrástau, pañca hrasvāh, plutá nava.
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