Deciphering India's First Script

We all have heard about Emperor Ashoka, but do you know how the script he used on his massive pillars was discovered and how it looked?

Ashokan Brahmi was a script used during Emperor Ashoka’s time, but it may have been used prior to his time too. It was the script that he used in some of his edicts.

Now, that you know where Ashokan Brahmi was used, let me tell you about its discovery.

Ashokan Brahmi was lost to the world for 2000 years but fortunately was rediscovered in 1836 by James Prinsep of the East India Company. James Prinsep had actually come to work in the mint, but instead ended up discovering the script. Prinsep had worked for a lot of time trying to discover the script but had not been successful. However, fortune favoured him. In the summer of 1837, he received a set of tracings from the railings and gateways of a Buddhist stupa in Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh. Prinsep immediately noticed that these inscriptions were smaller than the others he had seen. They all ended with what looked like a ‘S’ with a tail, followed by an inverted ‘T’ and then a dot. Just then Prinsep remembered something, during his travels he had seen many Sanskrit inscriptions on the walls of temples that recorded the donations of devotees. One word that was always used in the inscriptions was ‘danam’ or ‘gifted by’. So, if the last word on the inscriptions on the railings was indeed ‘danam’, then he had figured out 3 alphabets ‘D’, ‘N’ and ‘M’. Soon afterwards, he discovered the other vowels and consonants.

And here is how Ashokan Brahmi looks, I hope you will be able to write a few words using the script given below:

Script written by Curiologist