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Art. II.—The “Kistna Alphabet”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
At p. 139 of the second edition of Professor Carl Faulmann's “Das Buck der Schrift” will be found a table called the “Kistna” Alphabet. It is supposed to be a special form of writing adopted on and about the Kṛishṇā River on the East coast of India, a part of the country noted for centuries as a centre of religious and secular education, and at the present day recognized as the tract where the purest form of the Telugu language is spoken. The date of the alphabet is not given, but I am prepared to prove that the table is copied from one made out by Prinsep, and published in 1837; that this was itself taken from a single inscription which, was engraved some time between the sixth and eighth or ninth centuries A.D.; and that the special forms given are erroneous and misleading, being copied, not from the original inscription, but from a drawing. In the original the drawing of the inscription itself is fairly accurate, so far as the shape of the letters is concerned, but the alphabet compiled from it by Prinsep is far from satisfactory.
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- Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1891
References
page 136 note 1 The alphabet is an alphabet in use generally among the educated classes living under the dominion of the dynasty of the Eastern Chalukyas (A.D. 605–1023), part of whose territories lay on the Kṛishṇã river.
page 139 note 1 He had first seen the remains of the structure in 1797. The marbles now on the grand staircase of the British Museum were mostly brought to England by the late Sir Walter Elliot, after his excavations in 1845.
page 140 note 1 Where are they now? I know of only one volume in the India Office Library. In 1841 several Amarāvati slabs, including probably the smaller of the two inscribed stones neted by Mackenzie (see p. 19 of my Report on the Amarāvati Tope) were at Calcutta, and yet I have never been able to trace the existence at Calcutta at the present day of either the marbles or the volumes of drawings.—R.S.
page 140 note 2 Alluding to the name given in the locality to the Tope at Amarā;vati, viz. dîpâl-dinna, “mound of lights.”
page 141 note 1 This is the one from which the alphabet was composed, and is the larger of the two inscribed slabs under discussion.—R.S.
page 141 note 2 Letter quoted in my “Report,” etc., p. 66. Prinsep's translator, the Rev. W. Yates, gave a complete transcript in the Devanagari character, and a translation which was of course entirely inaccurate.
page 142 note 1 I was informed that it has found its way to the British Museum, not from the collection in South Kensington, but from the India Office Stores.—R.S.