had been neglected by the subsequent Arsacid line, was revived and the remains of its liturgical literature collected. The name is, however, also applied to the alphabet on the coins of the Parthian or Arsacid dynasty, which in its beginnings was clearly under Greek influence; while later, when a knowledge of Greek had disappeared, the attempts to imitate the old legends are as grotesque as those in western Europe to copy the inscriptions on Roman coins. The relationship between the Pahlavi and the Aramaic is clearest in the records written in the “Chaldaeo-Pahlavi” characters; the most important of these documents is the liturgical inscription of Hadji-abad, where the Arsacid and Sassanian alphabets are found side by side. Taylor (The Alphabet, ii. p. 248 f.) regards the former as probably derived from the “ancient alphabet of Eastern Iran, a sister alphabet of the Aramaean of the satrapies,” while the Sassanian belongs to a later stage of Aramaic.
Table I.
Table II.—Cyrillic and Glagolitic Symbols not given above.
The alphabets of India all spring from two sources: (a) the Kharoṣṭhī, (b) the Brāhmī alphabet. The history of the former is fairly clear. It was always a local alphabet, and never attained the importance of its rival. According to Bühler,[1] its range lay between 69° and 73° 30′ E. and 33° to 35° N., India.a conclusion which is not invalidated by the fact that some important modifications are found beyond this area, nor by Dr Stein’s discovery of a great mass of documents in this alphabet at Khotan in Turkestan, for, according to tradition, the ancient inhabitants of Khotan were emigrants banished in the time of King Açoka from the area to which Bühler assigns this alphabet (see Stein’s Preliminary Report, 1901, p. 51). Rapson[2] has pointed out that both Kharoṣṭhī and Brāhmī letters are found upon Persian silver sigloi, which were coined in the Punjab and belong to the period of the Achaemenid kings of Persia. As Bühler shows in detail, the Kharoṣṭhī alphabet is derived from the alphabet of the Aramaic inscriptions which date from the earlier part of the Achaemenid period. The Aramaic alphabet passed into India with the staff of subordinate officials by whom Darius organized his conquests there. The people of India already possessed their Brāhmī alphabet,
- ↑ Bühler, Indian Studies, iii. (2nd. ed., 1898), p. 93. The account of these alphabets is drawn from this work and from the same author’s Indische Paläographie in the Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie, to which is attached an atlas of plates (Strassburg, 1896), and in which a full bibliography is given.
- ↑ For a coin and a gild token with inscriptions see Rapson’s Indian Coins (in Grundriss d. ind.-ar. Phil.), Plate I.
