Page:The Origin of the Bengali Script.djvu/55

Rh It may be mentioned that the Kosām image- inscription of Bhīmavarman, of the Gupta year 139 = 458 A.D., shows the use of eastern forms and the findspot of this record is close to Pāli. In this inscription, we find that, all the test letters, ṣa, sa, ha and la, have assumed Western forms. The evidence of the Pāli grant of Lakṣmaṇa is further borne out by the alphabet used in the Amaunā grant of Nandana, of the Gupta year 232 = 551 A.D. This inscription was discovered in the Gayā District of Bihar and Orissa and cannot be referred to any other class of inscription but the North-Eastern. In this inscription we find that ṣa, sa, ha and la are of the western variety. Consequently we are now in a position to reconsider the statement made by Dr. Hoernle twenty-one years ago: "This displacement must have been in progress during the earlier part of the 6th century A.D., and must have been completed about 580 A.D., for in 588 A.D., we already find inscriptions in Bodh-Gayā (Inscription of Mahānāman, Fleet, p. 274) which show an exclusive North-Western character." We are now in a position to state definitely that the movement towards the adoption of Western variety forms in North-Eastern inscriptions was already in evidence in the 4th decade of the 5th century A.D. So early as the days of the Gupta emperor Skandagupta, the change had already affected the epigraphic alphabet of the time. The displacement was completed before the eighth decade of the 5th century and all traces of Eastern variety forms or characters had disappeared from the plains of Northern India, before the beginning of the 6th century A.D.