Zoomed Vinay Special · First-person editorial
The Word That Unlocked India's Lost Alphabet Was "Gift." The Man Who Read It First Then Gave Ashoka's Pillars to the Wrong King
In 1837 a Calcutta mint official noticed that scraps of writing from Sanchi ended with the same two letters, and within weeks he was reading a pillar nobody had understood for centuries. How Brahmi was cracked, why its author was proved to be Ashoka only in 1915, and what the Kalinga edict says, and does not say.
The point of view
In June 1837 James Prinsep, Secretary of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, was preparing a plate of short inscriptions copied from the railings of the Buddhist monument at Sanchi. He noticed that almost all of them ended in the same two letters. Guessing that they were donors' names followed by the word "gift", he worked out, as he put it, "the whole alphabet" in a few minutes. Within weeks he was reading the Delhi pillar, and giving its author to the wrong king. This Investigation opens Prinsep's papers, the 1915 rock at Maski that finally named Ashoka, and Rock Edict 13, the confession about Kalinga.
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James Prinsep, "Note on the Facsimiles of Inscriptions from Sanchi near Bhilsa, taken for the Society by Captain Ed. Smith, Engineers; and on the drawings of the Buddhist…
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James Prinsep, "Interpretation of the most ancient of the inscriptions on the pillar called the lat of Feroz Shah, near Delhi, and of the Allahabad, Radhia and Mattiah pillar,…
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James Prinsep, "Discovery of the name of Antiochus the Great, in two of the edicts of Asoka, king of India", JASB vol. 7, part 1 (February 1838), pp. 156ff.; and "On the Edicts…
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E. Hultzsch, Inscriptions of Asoka, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum vol. 1, new ed. (Oxford, 1925): Girnar, Kalsi, Shahbazgarhi intro pp. ix–xii; Delhi-Topra pp. xv–xvii;…
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D. C. Sircar, Inscriptions of Asoka, rev
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H. T. Prinsep, "Memoir of the Author", in E. Thomas (ed.), Essays on Indian Antiquities by James Prinsep, vol. 1 (London, 1858), pp. ii, xiii–xiv
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