Bhattiprolu script
Bhattiprolu script | |
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Script type | |
Time period | 3rd century-1st century BCE |
Languages | Proto-Sinaitic |
Sister systems | Tamil-Brahmi Kadamba script Gupta Sinhala Tocharian |
Brahmic scripts |
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The Brahmi script and its descendants |
The Bhattiprolu script is a variant of the
The inscriptions date to between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE,[1][2] putting them among the earliest evidence of Brahmi writing in South India.[3][4]
Bhattiprolu differs from
Discovery
Excavations that started in the year 1870 by Boswell,
Alexander Rea discovered three inscribed stone relic caskets containing crystal caskets, relics of Buddha and jewels in 1892.[7][8]
The most significant discovery is the crystal relic casket of
The script
The script was written on the urn containing Buddha's relics. Linguists surmise that the
There are a total of nine inscriptions, all dated to the 2nd century BCE or possibly earlier (a tenth inscription is in a script much closer to standard Brahmi), written in Prakrit.
The Bhattiprolu inscription also shows systemic but not
Derived scripts
Historians speculate that this script could have influenced the Kadamba script, which later became Old Telugu-Kannada script, and split off into Kannada script and Telugu script.[13]
See also
- Tamil Brahmi
- Kadamba script
- Gupta script
- Telugu-Kannada script
- Kalinga script
- Goykanadi
Notes
- ^ A History of Indian Buddhism: From Sakyamuni to Early Mahayana, p. 241, Akira Hirakawa, Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
- ^ Salomon (1998), p. 34f. cites one estimate of "not later than 200 BC", and of "about the end of the 2nd century B.C."
- ^ The Bhattiprolu Inscriptions, G. Buhler, 1894, Epigraphica Indica, Vol.2
- ^ Buddhist Inscriptions of Andhradesa, Dr. B.S.L Hanumantha Rao, 1998, Ananda Buddha Vihara Trust, Secunderabad
- ^ Richard Salomon (1998) Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages
- I. K. Sarma
- ^ The Bhattiprolu Stupa, A. Rea, 1892, South Indian Buddhist Antiquities, Vol 4
- ^ The Buddhist Architecture in Andhra, Dr D. J. Das, 1993, Books and Books, New Delhi
- ^ Buddhist Relic Caskets in Andhradesa, Dr B. Subrahmanyam, 1999, Ananda Buddha Vihara Trust, Secunderabad
- ^ Salomon 1999, p. 35
- ^ Salomon 1999, p. 36
- ^ Champahalakshmi, R. "A magnum opus on Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions". Frontline. The Hindu. Archived from the original on 30 December 2013. Retrieved 7 October 2011.
- ^ The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems by Florian Coulmas, p. 228; Salomon (1998), p. 40.
References
- Salomon, Richard (1999), Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages, Oxford University Press, OCLC 473618522