Page:The Origin of the Bengali Script.djvu/27

Rh the writings in the northern versions are not quite homogeneous. The pillar edicts of Allahabad, Māthiā, Niglivā, Paḍeriā, Rādhiā and Rāmpurwā form a very closely connected set, in which only occasionally minute differences can be traced, and the edicts of Bairāṭ No. I, Sahasrām, Barābār and Sāñci, do not differ much. A little further off stands the Dhauli separate edicts (where Edict VII has been written by a different hand from the rest), the Delhi-Mirāṭ edicts and the Allahabad Queen's edict, as these show the angular da. Very peculiar and altogether different is the writing of the rock-edict of Kālsi, with it, some letters on the coins of Agathocles and Pantaleon (but also some in the Jaugaḍa separate edicts), agree. Perhaps, it is possible to speak also of a North-Western variety of the older Maurya alphabet."

Thus Bühler distinguishes three different sub-varieties in the Northern Maurya alphabet. According to their geographical distribution, they may be classified as follows:—

(a) The North-Eastern—found in the Allahabad, Rādhiā, Māthiā, Rāmpurwā, Niglivā, Paḍeriā and the Sārnāth pillar edicts. The Earthen seals found at Pātnā (seal matrices bearing the inverted inscriptions Naṁdāya and Agapalaśa) as well as that found by Cunningham at Bodh-Gayā (Mokhalinam) belong to this period.

(b) The North-Central—found in the rock-edicts at Bairāṭ and Sahasrām, the pillar-edicts at Sāñci and Delhi and the cave-inscriptions at Barābār.