Kharosthi

Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara alongside various parts of South Asia and Central Asia. it remained in use until it died out in its homeland around the 5th century CE.

It was also in use in Bactria, the Kushan Empire, Sogdia, and along the Silk Road. There is some evidence it may have survived until the 7th century in Khotan and Niya, both cities in East Turkestan.

History

The name Kharosthi may derive from the Hebrew ''kharosheth'', a Semitic word for writing, or from Old Iranian ''*xšaθra-pištra'', which means "royal writing". The script was earlier also known as ''Indo-Bactrian script'', ''Kabul script'' and ''Arian-Pali''.

Scholars are not in agreement as to whether the Kharosthi 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. Kharosthi seems to be derived from a form of Aramaic used in administrative work during the reign of Darius the Great, rather than the monumental cuneiform used for public inscriptions. One theory suggests that the Aramaic script arrived with the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley 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. 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. An inscription in Aramaic dating back to the 4th century BCE was found in Sirkap, testifying to the presence of the Aramaic script in present-day Pakistan. According to Sir John Marshall, this seems to confirm that Kharoshthi was later developed from Aramaic.

While the Brahmi script remained in use for centuries, Kharosthi seems to have been abandoned after the 2nd–3rd century AD. Because of the substantial differences between the Semitic-derived Kharosthi script and its successors, knowledge of Kharosthi may have declined rapidly once the script was supplanted by Brahmi-derived scripts, until its re-discovery by Western scholars in the 19th century.

The Kharosthi script was deciphered separately almost concomitantly by James Prinsep (in 1835, published in the ''Journal of the Asiatic society of Bengal'', India) and by Carl Ludwig Grotefend (in 1836, published in ''Blätter für Münzkunde'', Germany), with Grotefend "evidently not aware" of Prinsep's article, followed by Christian Lassen (1838). They all used the bilingual coins of the Indo-Greek Kingdom (obverse in Greek, reverse in Pali, using the Kharosthi script). This in turn led to the reading of the Edicts of Ashoka, some of which were written in the Kharosthi script (the Major Rock Edicts at Mansehra and Shahbazgarhi).

The study of the Kharosthi script was recently invigorated by the discovery of the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, a set of birch bark manuscripts written in Kharosthi, discovered near the Afghan city of Hadda just west of the Khyber Pass in Pakistan. The manuscripts were donated to the British Library in 1994. The entire set of British Library manuscripts are dated to the 1st century CE, although other collections from different institutions contain Kharosthi manuscripts from 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE, making them the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered.

Alphabet

Kharosthi is mostly written right to left. Some variations in both the number and order of syllables occur in extant texts.

The Kharosthi alphabet is also known as the arapacana alphabet, and follows the order.

:''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 rtha (''or'' ha)''
:''bha cha sma hva tsa''
:''gha ṭha ṇa pha ska''
:''ysa śca ṭa ḍha''

This alphabet was used in Gandharan Buddhism as a mnemonic for the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, a series of verses on the nature of phenomena.

Consonants

A bar above a consonant can be used to indicate various modified pronunciations depending on the consonant, such as nasalization or aspiration. It is used with k, ṣ, g, c, j, n, m, ś, ṣ, s, and h.

The ''cauda'' changes how consonants are pronounced in various ways, particularly fricativization. It is used with g, j, ḍ, t, d, p, y, v, ś, and s.

The dot below is used with m and h, but its precise phonetic function is unknown.

Vowels and syllables

Kharosthi includes only one standalone vowel character, which is used for initial vowels in words. Other initial vowels use the ''a'' character modified by diacritics. Each syllable includes the short /a/ sound by default, with other vowels being indicated by diacritic marks.

Long vowels are marked with the diacritic . An anusvara indicates nasalization of the vowel or a nasal segment following the vowel. A visarga indicates the unvoiced syllable-final /h/. It can also be used as a vowel length marker. A further diacritic, the ''double ring below'' appears with vowels -a and -u in some Central Asian documents, but its precise phonetic function is unknown.

Salomon has established that the vowel order is /a e i o u/, akin to Semitic scripts, rather than the usual vowel order for Indic scripts /a i u e o/.

Punctuation

Nine Kharosthi punctuation marks have been identified:

Numerals

Kharosthi included a set of numerals that are reminiscent of Roman numerals and Psalter Pahlavi Numerals. The system is based on an additive and a multiplicative principle, but does not have the subtractive feature used in the Roman numeral system.Graham Flegg, ''Numbers: Their History and Meaning'', Courier Dover Publications, 2002, , p. 67f.

The numerals, like the letters, are written from right to left. There is no zero and no separate signs for the digits 5–9. Numbers are written additively, so, for example, the number 1996 would be written as .

Unicode

Kharosthi was added to the Unicode Standard in March 2005 with the release of version 4.1.

The Unicode block for Kharosthi is U+10A00–U+10A5F:

Gallery

File:Kharoshti script on a wooden plate, National Museum, New Delhi.jpg, Kharosthi script on a wooden plate in the National Museum of India in New Delhi
File:Kharoshti script on a wooden plate, National Museum, New Delhi 01.jpg, Kharosthi script on a wooden plate in the National Museum of India in New Delhi
File:Kharoshti script on a wooden plate, National Museum, New Delhi 02.jpg, Kharosthi script on a wooden plate in the National Museum of India in New Delhi
File:Kharosthi script on wood, Niya, 3rd century AD - National Musem, New Delhi - IMG 2216.JPG, Kharosthi script on wood from Niya, 3rd century CE
File:Niya BLH170 OR821114231424 W.jpg, Double-wedged wooden tablet in Gandhari written in Kharosthi script, 2nd to 4th century CE
File:佉卢文木牍.jpg, Wooden tablet inscribed with Kharosthi characters (2nd–3rd century CE). Excavated at the Niya ruins in Xinjiang, China. Collection of the Xinjiang Museum.
File:Loulan kharosthi document.jpg, Wooden Kharosthi document found at Loulan, China by Aurel Stein
File:Fragmentary Buddhist text - Gandhara birchbark scrolls (1st C), part 31 - BL Or. 14915.jpg, Fragmentary Kharosthi Buddhist text on birchbark (Part of a group of early manuscripts from Gandhara), first half of 1st century CE. Collection of the British Library in London
File:MenanderCoin.jpg, Silver bilingual tetradrachm of Menander I (155-130 BCE). ''Obverse:'' Greek legend, ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΣΩΤΗΡΟΣ ΜΕΝΑΝΔΡΟΥ (BASILEOS SOTEROS MENANDROU), literally, "Of Saviour King Menander". ''Reverse:'' Kharosthi legend: MAHARAJA TRATARASA MENADRASA "Saviour King Menander". Athena advancing right, with thunderbolt and shield. Taxila mint mark.
File:KingGurgamoyaKhotan1stCenturyCE.jpg, Coin of King Gurgamoya of Khotan (1st century CE). ''Obverse'': Kharoshthi legend "Of the great king of kings, king of Khotan, Gurgamoya. ''Reverse'': Chinese legend: "Twenty-four grain copper coin".
File:Coin of Menander Dikaiou.jpg, Coin of Menander II Dikaiou ''Obverse'': Menander wearing a diadem. Greek legend: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΔΙΚΑΙΟΥ ΜΕΝΑΝΔΡΟΥ "King Menander the Just". ''Reverse'': Winged figure bearing diadem and palm, with halo, probably Nike. The Kharoshthi legend reads MAHARAJASA DHARMIKASA MENADRASA "Great King, Menander, follower of the Dharma, Menander".
File:Hashtnagar Pedestal Rajar Bodhisattva Gandhara 384 exhib British Museum.jpg, The Indo-Greek Hashtnagar Pedestal symbolizes bodhisattva and ancient Kharosthi script. Found near Rajar in Gandhara, Pakistan. Exhibited at the British Museum in London.
File:Mathura Lion Capital Detail.jpg, Mathura lion capital with addorsed lions and Prakrit inscriptions in Kharoshthi script
File:Han dynasty Kharoshthi inscription.jpg, Fragments of stone well railings with a Buddhist inscription written in Kharoshthi script (late Han period to the Three Kingdoms era). Discovered at Luoyang, China in 1924.
File:Ashoka edict shahbaz-garhi1.png, Portion of Emperor Ashoka's Rock Edicts at Shahbaz Garhi
File:Ashoka edict shahbaz-garhi2.png, Portion of Emperor Ashoka's Rock Edicts at Shahbaz Garhi
File:Document on Wooden Tablet written in Kharosthi Script (cropped).jpg, Document on Wooden Stick written in Kharoshthi script, 3rd-4th century CE.

See also

*Brahmi
*History of Afghanistan
* History of Pakistan
* Pre-Islamic scripts in Afghanistan

Further reading

Kaschgar und die Kharoṣṭhī (1903)

References

Further reading

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External links

Gandhari.org
Catalog and Corpus of all known Kharoṣṭhī (Gāndhārī) texts
Indoskript 2.0
a paleographic database of Brahmi and Kharosthi
A Preliminary Study of Kharoṣṭhī Manuscript Paleography
by Andrew Glass, University of Washington (2000)

{{Authority control

Ancient history of Afghanistan
Obsolete writing systems
Ancient history of Pakistan
Abugida writing systems
Right-to-left writing systems