Kharosthi

Topic: Studying Indian History: Sources, Dating and Historiography · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 2 "Kings, Farmers and Towns"

Meaning

Kharosthi was an old Indian script, written from right to left, used mainly in the north-west of the subcontinent to write Prakrit (the everyday spoken languages of ordinary people). Asoka's inscriptions in the north-west use it.

It matters because it is the second Asokan script after Brahmi. James Prinsep deciphered it with the help of Indo-Greek coins that gave the same king's name in Greek and in Kharosthi.

Explanation

Background: one empire, many scripts

• Asoka put up his inscriptions all over his empire. He used the script that local people could read.
• In most of India, Prakrit was written in Brahmi.
• In the north-west, Prakrit was written in Kharosthi.

• In Afghanistan, the inscriptions used Aramaic and Greek.

• So Kharosthi was a regional script. It was not used across India.

• Most scholars think Kharosthi came from the Aramaic script. Aramaic was used in the Persian (Achaemenid) empire, which once ruled the north-west.

Main features

• Direction: written right to left, like Aramaic. Brahmi is written left to right.
• Language: the Kharosthi records we know are mostly in Prakrit, not Sanskrit.
• Surfaces: it appears on stone (Asokan edicts) and on coins (Indo-Greek coins).
• Region: the north-west, roughly the old Gandhara area. Today most of this area is in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

How it was deciphered (1830s)

• James Prinsep, an officer of the East India Company mint, deciphered both Brahmi and Kharosthi.
• The key was bilingual coins (coins carrying the same words in two languages):
• Indo-Greek coins of about the 2nd–1st centuries BCE gave the same royal name in Greek and in Kharosthi, for example Apollodotus.
• Scholars could already read Greek letters.

• So each Kharosthi letter was matched to its Greek partner, one by one.

• Prinsep then showed that the language of these Kharosthi records was Prakrit.

• The same idea cracked Egyptian hieroglyphs: a bilingual text where one side can already be read.
• Brahmi was cracked differently. Scholars, helped by Indian pandits, worked backwards from Bengali and Devanagari letters. Asokan Brahmi was read in 1838.

Results

• The north-western Asokan edicts could now be read along with the Brahmi ones.
• Scholars showed that devanampiya ("beloved of the gods") piyadassi ("pleasant to behold") was Asoka. To do this, they compared content, style, language and palaeography (the study of old letter shapes) across all his inscriptions.
• Coin legends in Kharosthi helped scholars name and roughly date the Indo-Greek kings of the north-west.
• By the early 20th century, the broad outline of India's dynastic political history was settled.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: Mauryan times (Asoka, 3rd century BCE) and the Indo-Greek period (c. 2nd–1st centuries BCE).
• Region: the north-west of the subcontinent (Gandhara). Asoka's two best-known Kharosthi rock edicts are at Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra, both now in Pakistan.
• Key people:
• Asoka, who issued the edicts.
• Indo-Greek kings such as Apollodotus, whose coins carry Kharosthi legends.

• James Prinsep, who deciphered the script.

• Prinsep's mint career:

• He was assay master (an officer who tests the purity of metal in coins) at the Benares mint, 1820–30. [2]
• He returned to the Calcutta mint as assay master in 1832. [2]
• He left for England in 1838 because of ill health. [2]

• His mint work explains why he handled so many old coins and their legends.

• Prinsep was the first European scholar to decipher Asoka's edicts. [2]

• Evidence:
• Asokan rock edicts in the north-west.
• Bilingual Greek–Kharosthi Indo-Greek coins.

• Alexander Cunningham's set of Asokan inscriptions (1877).

• The ASI Epigraphy Branch now studies writing on stone, metal, wood and shell, from the Mauryan period onwards. [3]

Don't confuse with

• Brahmi: written left to right, used for most Asokan edicts across India, and read in 1838 by working backwards from Bengali and Devanagari. Brahmi is the parent of most later Indian scripts, including Devanagari. [4] Kharosthi is written right to left, was used only in the north-west, and was cracked with Greek–Kharosthi coins.
• Aramaic and Greek (Asokan): these are the languages of Asoka's inscriptions in Afghanistan, for example at Kandahar. Kharosthi is a script for writing Prakrit in the north-west, not a separate language.
• Prakrit: this is the language. Kharosthi and Brahmi are scripts used to write it. A common trap: "Kharosthi is a language". It is not.
• Sanskrit: early scholars wrongly assumed the language of the earliest inscriptions was Sanskrit, and so their early attempts failed. The earliest inscriptions, including the Kharosthi ones, are in Prakrit.

Prelims Hooks

• Kharosthi = written right to left. Brahmi = written left to right.
• Asokan inscriptions: Brahmi (most of India), Kharosthi (north-west), Aramaic and Greek (Afghanistan).
• Kharosthi was deciphered with bilingual Indo-Greek coins (c. 2nd–1st centuries BCE) giving a king's name in Greek and Kharosthi, e.g. Apollodotus.
• James Prinsep, assay master of the East India Company mint (Benares 1820–30, Calcutta from 1832), deciphered both Brahmi and Kharosthi. [2]
• The language written in Kharosthi was identified as Prakrit, not Sanskrit.
• Kharosthi Asokan rock edicts: Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra (now in Pakistan).

Mains Points

• Scripts show how Asoka governed through communication. He used Brahmi, Kharosthi, Aramaic and Greek so that each region could read his message. This shows a ruler adapting to local cultures, and it shows that the north-west had close links with the Persian and Greek worlds.
• Coins proved as useful as stone. Kharosthi was cracked through Indo-Greek coins, not texts. Prinsep's job as a mint assay master gave him access to them. [2] This shows how one type of source (numismatics, the study of coins) can unlock another (epigraphy, the study of inscriptions). Historians must use several kinds of evidence together.
• Decipherment was a colonial project with Indian help. It came out of Company institutions like the mint, and Indian pandits helped read Brahmi. It turned unreadable stones into dated history. By the early 20th century this had fixed the outline of dynasties, and historians could then move on to economic and social history.

Related concepts

• Inscription
• Epigraphy
• Prakrit
• Palaeography
• Votive inscriptions
• Aihole inscription
• Copper plate inscriptions
• Asiatic Society of Bengal
• James Prinsep
• Brahmi script

Read more

• Epigraphy: inscriptions and their decipherment