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ON THE ORIGIN OF THE EARLY INDIAN SCRIPTS(1)
Several recent publications have questioned prevailing doctrines and offered new views on the antiquity of writing in early India and on the source and early development of the Indian scripts (Brahmi and Kharosthi). Most of the new studies agree in assigning the origin of these scripts to a later period, i.e., the early Mauryan era (late fourth to mid third centuries B.C.), than has generally been done in the past, and in deriving them from prototypes in Semitic or Semitic-derived scripts. The main works to be evaluated here are Oskar von Hinueber's Der Beginn der Schrift und fruehe Schriftlichkeit in Indien and Harry Falk's Schrift im alten Indien: Ein Forschungsbericht mit Anmerkungen.(2) Also discussed are two recent articles on similar topics, Gerard Fussman's "Les premiers systemes d'ecriture en Inde"(3) and Kenneth R. Norman's "The Development of Writing in India and its Effect upon the Pali Canon,"(4) as well as some other relevant publications. The authority and significance of this new trend toward assigning a later date of origin for the Indian scripts is evaluated and placed in the context of broader historical and cultural issues.
THE DEVELOPMENT AND EARLY HISTORY of writing in India of the historical period (that is, after the time of the Indus Valley civilization) has long been a controversial problem. Basically, arguments turn around three main issues:
The sources and origins of the Indian scripts of the historical period, namely, Kharosthi and especially Brahmi.
The date at which these scripts, or their prototypes, first came into use.
The relationship, if any, of the historical scripts to the writing of the proto-historic Indus Valley civilization and the explanation of the long interval during which writing appears to have fallen out of use in India.
The principal reasons that these issues, particularly the second, are so problematic are:
There are no securely datable specimens of writing from the historical period earlier than the inscriptions of Asoka from the mid-third century B.C. Other early inscriptions which have been proposed by various authors as examples of pre-Asokan writing are of uncertain date at best.
The external testimony from literary and other sources on the use of writing in pre-Asokan India is vague and inconclusive. Alleged evidence of...