The Letter That Was Read First

Brahmi was unreadable for something like a thousand years. The script fell out of use as its descendants replaced it, nobody in India was taught it, and the Ashokan edicts stood in the open for centuries as visible writing that no one could interpret. It was read again in 1837, when James Prinsep, then secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, published the values of the letters. His way in was not the edicts but the short donative records cut into the railings at Sanchi, dozens of them, each naming a donor and ending in the same word for gift. A formula that repeats with only the names changing gives a decipherer exactly what is needed, and the recurring ending fixed enough values for the rest to follow.

What came out of that work was the whole epigraphic history of early India, and the shape of this letter is one of the reasons the reading holds. Its earliest form is a plain cross of two strokes, simple enough to be cut consistently by masons of very different skill, and stable enough that its descent into the later scripts can be followed step by step through the Kushana and Gupta hands into the northern and southern branches alike. Comparing a single common letter across dated inscriptions is how an undated one is placed, and a letter that is both frequent and simple is the palaeographer's best instrument.