Page:The Origin of the Bengali Script.djvu/24

used. In the Assam plates of Vallabhadeva of the Śaka year 1107=1185 A.D.^[1] we find archaisms, which lurked in the backwoods of civilisation. In the east the Bengali script was also being used in Sylhet, where similar archaisms are to be met with in the Sylhet grants of Keśavadeva^[2] and Īśānadeva.^[3] In the south the Bengali script was used throughout Orissa. We find the proto-Bengali script in the Ananta Vāsudeva temple inscription of Bhaṭṭa Bhavadeva at Bhuvaneśvara, and the modern Bengali alphabet in the grants of the Gāṅga Kings Nṛsiṁhadeva II^[4] and Nṛsiṁhadeva IV.^[5] The modern cursive Oḍiyā script was developed out of the Bengali after the 14th century A. D. like the modern Assamese.

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1. Epigraphia Indica, Vol. V, p. 183.
2. Proceedings, A. S. B., 1880, p. 148.
3. Ibid, p. 152.
4. J. A. S. B., 1896, Pt. I, p. 235.
5. Ibid, 1895, Pt. I, p. 136.

 

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