A List of Kharosthi Inscriptions

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This work represents an annotated list of Kharosthi inscriptions of subcontinental India which was prepared by Nanigopal Majumdar, a celebrated archaeologist and paleographer, who was killed by some notorious robbers. Majumdar's exhaustive list, prepared with exemplary effort. was published in 1924 in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (now Journal of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata). This list was used by S. Konow. The value of the reprint consists of a very informative Introduction of Professor Bratindranath Mukherjee, a leading expert on Kharosthi, who traces its evolution and characteristic features in a highly interesting manner. This work, published on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of the Bicentennial of the Asiatic Society, would, we believe, lead to further research on the subject, and enrich our knowledge of both the script and Prakrit language, as it developed in North-Western India long before the birth of Christ.

A script on one side of a great number of coins, bearing Greek legend on the other side, attracted serious attention of scholars in about the late first quarter of the 19th century. These pieces had been unearthed mainly in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent and its borderlands (up to the Hindukush). The attempts by scholars to decipher the script were boosted with the discoveries of two full inscriptions written in the same alphabet at Manikyala (in the Punjab), one in 1830 and the other in 1834. Serious efforts of C.Lassen, J. Prinsep. E. Norris and A. Cunningham began to unravel the mystery of the script and by 1854 the process of decipherment was more or less complete and the identity of the language for which it served as the vehicle was established. The script was noted as had been used for writing a form of Prakrit and the direction of its writing was from right to left.