| Bhattiprolu script | |
|---|---|
 The 6th stone inscription excavated at Bhattiprolu believed to be from 3rd century BCE | |
| Script type | |
Time period | 3rd century-1st century BCE |
| Languages | Prakrits |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Sister systems | Tamil-Brahmi Kadamba script Gupta Sinhala Tocharian |
| Brahmic scripts |
|---|
| The Brahmi script and its descendants |
The Bhattiprolu script is a variant of the Brahmi script which has been found in old inscriptions at Bhattiprolu, a small village in the erstwhile Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is located in the fertile Krishna River delta and the estuary region where the river meets the Bay of Bengal.
The inscriptions date to between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE,[1][2] putting them among the earliest evidence of Brahmi writing in South India.[3][4]
Bhattiprolu differs from Ashokan Brahmi in two significant ways. First, the letters gh, j, m, l, s are "radically different": m is upside-down compared to Brahmi, while gh appears to derive from g rather than from Semitic heth. Secondly, the inherent vowel has been discarded: A consonant written without diacritics represents the consonant alone. This is unique to Bhattiprolu and Tamil Brahmi among the early Indian scripts.[5]
- ^ A History of Indian Buddhism: From Sakyamuni to Early Mahayana, p. 241, Akira Hirakawa, Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
- ^ Salomon (1998), p. 34f. cites one estimate of "not later than 200 BC", and of "about the end of the 2nd century B.C."
- ^ The Bhattiprolu Inscriptions, G. Buhler, 1894, Epigraphica Indica, Vol.2
- ^ Buddhist Inscriptions of Andhradesa, Dr. B.S.L Hanumantha Rao, 1998, Ananda Buddha Vihara Trust, Secunderabad
- ^ Richard Salomon (1998) Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages