The Image below of a Buddhist statue with inscription was taken from Taxila (Takshashila) a famous place to both Vedic/Hindu and Buddhist. I was recently asked for a decipherment of the image. The inscription is an early north western Brahmi script, very close to the early Sharada script. The inscription on the statue reads (right to left) "Sukhabodha MahAdeva" (The Sensation of pleasure at the city of Buddha.). The numbers in the circles below the image are the match's to the Brahmi script from the inscription. The 5th # got cut off in the scan it is the 6th letter , top box right ( it is one letter but two signs in the Sharada script, it is the retroflexe d, this d changes to a dental in some regional scripts). Just after this D is an H (Bod-ha) the same sign that is after the Ma in Ma-ha (possible letter missing a vowell in the space after the last 'h').
The Brahmi script is the oldest member of the Brahmic family of alphabets. The Brahmi script usually runs from left to right but a coin from the 4th century BC like the statue below are written from right to left like the Indus Valley script (some regional scripts also run right to left) . The first official unveiling of the Brahmi script was in the Ashoka era. Ashoka was the emperor of India around 272 to 231 BCE and grandson of Chandragupta Maurya (320 - 298 BC) who was credited with defeating Alexander's satrapies. Ashoka converted to Buddhism over his remorse at the battle of Kalingas (264BCE). Here their official script is first unveiled under Buddhism and not the prior two generations before Ashoka or even the countless generations before Alexanders conquest of Pakistan. Where today there is evidence of the same script as early as 600 BC, again up to Ashoka they never officially unveiled it. The Brahmi script is believed by most scholars to be derived from a Semitic script (below second box down on the right; evolution from the Sinaitic script to the Phoenician and than Greek). I believe the Indus Valley script to be the origin of both the Brahmi and early Semitic scripts. The established relationship between the Brahmi script and the early Semitic script can be seen in the box below on the right (marked A.). Below the box is a relationship I found between the early Cantonese and the Cypriot script of the Mediterranean. Here I wish to point out that in the same time this script appears in the middle east with the Semitic's , Vedic words start appearing. Vedic words start appearing in the middle east around 1700 BC , same time as the end of the Indus Valley. The relationship of the Indoeuropean Cypriot and early China can only be explained by the common denominator the Vedic Indus Valley that traded with China with a relationship between there scripts (Indus Valley - China realationship link below). On the right are the sites of the Simitic scripts and Sarada script. The letter B below is a square box found in the Thamudic, Safatene, and Proto-Sinitic scripts. Below the inscription has a combination 'B' and 'Bh' best perserved in the Pallava script. |
