Brahmi and Kharosthi Scripts
composition: secure
witness: the Ashokan rock and pillar edicts, firmly dated to the 3rd century BC
Two scripts, Brahmi written left to right across most of South Asia and Kharosthi written right to left in the northwest, carried royal, religious, commercial, and personal writing across the subcontinent from the third century BC onward, even though how and when each first developed remains disputed.
- firmly attested by the 3rd century BC in Ashoka's edicts; earlier origins are debated
- Brahmi (most of the empire) and Kharosthi (the northwest) served side by side under Ashoka
- Kharosthi derives from an Aramaic prototype and fell out of use within centuries
- Brahmi became the ancestor of nearly all later South and Southeast Asian scripts
Brahmi and Kharosthi are the two scripts in which securely dated South Asian writing first survives at scale, both firmly attested by the third century BC in the empire-wide inscriptions of Ashoka, who used Brahmi across most of his realm and Kharosthi in the northwest, where Greek and Aramaic versions of his edicts also appear. Kharosthi, generally derived from an Aramaic prototype, dropped out of regular use within a few centuries; Brahmi did not, and it became the ancestor of nearly every later script used to write Indian and many Southeast Asian languages, from Devanagari to Tamil, Sinhala, Tibetan, Thai, and Khmer scripts. Scholars broadly accept a genealogical link between Kharosthi and Aramaic writing, but the earlier development of Brahmi itself, whether from a Semitic prototype, an independent local invention, or some combination, remains an open and debated question.
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