The Kharosthi Alphabet

R. D. Banerji

doi:10.1017/S0035869X0014794X

The Kharosthi Alphabet

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011

R. D. Banerji

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Kharoṣṭhī or Kharoṣṭrī is the name of a particular script used in Afghanistan, the Punjab, and portions of Central Asia from the fourth or fifth centuries before Christ to the third or fourth centuries of the Christian era. In the third or fourth centuries a.d. it gradually went out of use, the place being taken by one or more forms of the mediaeval Brāhmī. In the eighteenth century the earlier generation of epigraphists and archæologists used to call this script “Bactrian”, “Indo-Bactrian”, “Bactro-Pali”, “Ariano-Pali”, etc. Then it was identified with the Kharoṣṭhī or Kharoṭṭhī lipi, on the evidence of the Fa-wan-shu-lin. The Chinese work describes the “ass-lip” (Kham-oṣṭha in Sanskrit) script, invented by one Kharoṣṭha, in which the writing ran from the right to left. This identification, proposed by George Bühler, has since met with general acceptance.

Type: Articles
Information: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , April 1920 , pp. 193 - 219

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X0014794X [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1920

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^{page 215 note 3} Ibid., p. 234, n. 1.

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^{page 217 note 2} Ibid., p. 89, pl. xiia.

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^{page 219 note 2} The Plates accompanying this paper will appear in the July number of the Journal.

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