Kharoṣṭhī

The Kharoṣṭhī script, also known as the Gāndhārī script, is an ancient abugida (an alphasyllabary, based on consonants with graphical variations to express their associated vowels) used by the Gandhara culture of historic northwest Indian subcontinent to write the Gāndhārī and Sanskrit languages. It was in use from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE. It was also in use in Kushan, Sogdiana (see Issyk kurgan) and along the Silk Road where there is some evidence it may have survived until the 7th century in the remote way stations of Khotan and Niya. Kharoṣṭhī is encoded in the Unicode range U+10A00—U+10A5F, from version 4.1.0.

Form

Kharoṣṭhī, unlike all other Indian scripts, is written from right to left. Each syllable includes the short a sound by default, with other vowels being indicated by diacritic marks. Recent epigraphical evidence highlighted by Professor Richard Salomon has shown that the order of letters in the Kharoṣṭhī script follows what has become known as the Arapacana Alphabet. As preserved in Sanskrit documents the alphabet runs:

a ra pa ca na la da ba ḍa ṣa va ta ya ṣṭa ka sa ma ga stha ja śva dha śa kha kṣa sta jñā rta ha bha cha sma hva tsa bha ṭha ṇa pha ska ysa śca ṭa ḍha

Some variations in both the number and order of syllables occur in extant texts.

Kharoṣṭhī includes only one standalone vowel sign which is used for initial vowels in words. Other initial vowels are use the a character modified by diacritics. Using epigraphical evidence Salomon has established that the vowel order is a e i o u, rather than the usual vowel order for Indic scripts a i u e o. This is the same as the Semitic vowel order.

The alphabet was used by Buddhists as a mnemonic for remembering a series of verses relating to the nature of phenomena. In Tantric Buddhism this list was incorporated into ritual practices, and later became enshrined in mantras.

History

The Kharoṣṭhī script was deciphered by James Prinsep (1799–1840), using the bilingual coins of the Indo-Greeks (Obverse in Greek, reverse in Pāli, using the Kharoṣṭhī script). This in turn led to the reading of the Edicts of Ashoka, some of which, from the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, were written in the Kharoṣṭhī script.

Paper strip with writing in Kharoṣṭhī. 2-5th century CE, Yingpan, Eastern Tarim Basin, Xinjiang Museum.

Scholars are not in agreement as to whether the Kharoṣṭhī script evolved gradually, or was the deliberate work of a single inventor. An analysis of the script forms shows a clear dependency on the Aramaic alphabet but with extensive modifications to support the sounds found in Indic languages. One model is that the Aramaic script arrived with the Achaemenid conquest of the region in 500 BCE and evolved over the next 200+ years to reach its final form by the 3rd century BCE where it appears in some of the Edicts of Ashoka found in northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. However, no intermediate forms have yet been found to confirm this evolutionary model, and rock and coin inscriptions from the 3rd century BCE onward show a unified and standard form.

The study of the Kharoṣṭhī script was recently invigorated by the discovery of the Gandharan Buddhist Texts, a set of birch-bark manuscripts written in Kharoṣṭhī, discovered near the Afghani city of Hadda just west of the Khyber Pass. The manuscripts were donated to the British Library in 1994. The entire set of manuscripts are dated to the 1st century CE, making them the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered.

A silver tetradrachm of the Indo-Greek king Philoxenus (100-95 BCE), with front legend in Greek and reverse legend in the Kharoṣṭhī script.

Coin of Gurgamoya, king of Khotan. Khotan, 1st century CE.

See also

• History of Pakistan
• History of Afghanistan
• Brahmi

References

• Falk, Harry. Schrift im alten Indien: Ein Forschungsbericht mit Anmerkungen, Gunter Narr Verlag, 1993 (in German)
• Fussman's, Gérard. Les premiers systèmes d'écriture en Inde, in Annuaire du Collège de France 1988-1989 (in French)
• Hinüber, Oscar von. Der Beginn der Schrift und frühe Schriftlichkeit in Indien, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990 (in German)
• Norman, Kenneth R. The Development of Writing in India and its Effect upon the Pâli Canon, in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens (36), 1993
• Salomon, Richard. New evidence for a Ganghari origin of the arapacana syllabary. Journal of the American Oriental Society. Apr-Jun 1990, Vol.110 (2), p.255-273.
• Salomon, Richard. An additoinal note on arapacana. Journal of the American Oriental Society. 1993, Vol.113 (2), p.275-6.
• Salomon, Richard. Kharoṣṭhī syllables used as location markers in Gāndhāran stūpa architecture. Pierfrancesco Callieri, ed., Architetti, Capomastri, Artigiani: L’organizzazione dei cantieri e della produzione artistica nell’asia ellenistica. Studi offerti a Domenico Faccenna nel suo ottantesimo compleanno. (Serie Orientale Rome 100; Rome: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2006), pp. 181-224.

External links

• List of all known Kharoṣṭhī (Gandhārī) inscriptions.
• information on the Kharoṣṭhī alphabet by Omniglot
• A Preliminary Study of Kharoṣṭhī Manuscript Paleography by Andrew Glass, University of Washington (2000)
• On The Origin Of The Early Indian Scripts: A Review Article by Richard Salomon, University of Washington (via archive.org)
• Proposal to encode Kharoṣṭhī in Unicode (includes good background info)
• Bibliography of sources relating to the Arapacana alphabet in Buddhism

Donate to Wikimedia