[🇵🇰] Ancient History of Writing in Pakistan: The Kharosthi script

[Old School]

The Kharosthi script (𐨑𐨪𐨆𐨯𐨠𐨁)​

The Kharosthi script, also spelled Kharoshthi or (Kharosthi: 𐨑𐨪𐨆𐨯𐨠𐨁), was an ancient writing system used in Gandhara, which is now present-day Pakistan and northeastern Afghanistan. It was used to write Gandhari Prakrit and Sanskrit. The script was an abugida, was introduced during the 3rd or 4th century BCE, and was used until the 3rd century CE. It was also used in Bactria, the Kushan Empire, Sogdia, and along the Silk Road. There is evidence that it may have survived until the 7th century in Khotan and Niya, both cities in Xinjiang.
The earliest examples of Kharosthi were found in Gandhara, recorded in the Ashokan edicts in the mid-3rd century BCE at the towns of Mansehra and Shahbazgarhi. Ashokan inscriptions were written in Prakrit in the Brahmi script. However, towards Gandhara, these inscriptions were composed using the Kharosthi script, also in the Prakrit language, or sometimes even translated directly into Aramaic or Greek. Kharosthi was an adaptation of the north Semitic script used by the Persians to suit the phonetics of Gandhari, a Prakrit dialect used in Gandhara and its surroundings.
Kharosthi remained dominant in the region where the Brahmi script was not prevalent. Kharosthi arrived in several areas in central Asia, aided by the flourishing commerce of the Silk Road. It was also employed in the kingdom of Shanshan, located in the southern and eastern areas of the Tarim basin. Most texts found in Shanshan are written in the Chinese script, but some Kharosthi examples were retrieved from the ancient cities of Niya and Endere in the western section of Shanshan.

(The Indo-Greek Hashtnagar Pedestal symbolizes bodhisattva and ancient Kharosthi script. Found near Rajar in Gandhara, Pakistan. Exhibited at the British Museum in London.)​

Kharosthi inscriptions dating from the 3rd century CE have also been found in Sogdiana and Bactria during the Kushan empire (1st to 4th century CE). There are also Kharosthi examples located further east in Luoyang, China, dated to the Han dynasty during the reign of emperor Ling (168-189 CE).
The oldest examples of Kharosthi found in Gandhara are displayed on the Ashokan edicts, carved on rock pillars dated to the mid-3rd century BCE. During the following century, Kharosthi was widely used on coin inscriptions when a currency system was introduced in Gandhara after establishing the short-lived Indo-Greek kingdom. The coins issued had bilingual Greek and Prakrit inscriptions, sometimes with Brahmi or Kharosthi characters.

(Gandhāra was an ancient Indo-Aryan civilization centered in present-day north-west Pakistan and northeast Afghanistan)​

Some isolated examples of Kharosthi have been identified outside northwest Pakistan . In the Bharhut village (Madhya Pradesh, India), Kharosthi characters employed in masonry have been recorded. There are also examples of Kharosthi inscriptions on pottery found in Bengal. In Miran, an ancient town at the edge of the Taklamakan desert in the Xinjiang region of China, examples of Kharosthi texts written on silk have been retrieved. Further east, in Luoyang, examples of Kharosthi inscriptions have been recorded on a wall around a well. This text describes a group of Buddhist monks who lived in the area in the 2nd century CE.
By the 4th century CE, Kharosthi had become extinct or was replaced by other writing systems in most areas where it had once been employed. To date, no Kharosthi-derived scripts have been identified.

References:
Allchin, F. The Archaeology of Early Historic South Asia. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Chakrabarti, D. The Oxford Companion to Indian Archaeology. Oxford University Press, 2006.
Coulmas, F. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.
Scarre, C. The Human Past. Thames & Hudson, 2013.

https://gandhari.org/tmp/glass_2000.pdf

 

[Old School]

The modern day Pakistan has a rich history of writing and literature, which goes back thousands of years.

 

[Old School]

It is a matter of great historical puzzle how on earth Pakistan, being the cradle of Indus-Aryan civilization with still multiple surviving Indus-Aryan languages, embraced a half-cooked Middle-Eastern identity on the one hand and, on the other hand, half-baked into the Aboriginal South Asian tribal culture and tainted by English colonial legacy. How a four thousand year old civilization as our country has to seek validation from people from abroad who only learned to write not so long ago?
There must be a national philosophical as well as historical debate about this identity crisis of our people. This debate has already started in our civilizational sibling Persia, which is also trying to return to its rich civilizational roots.

 

[Mkesath]

Reading the ancient Kharoshti from an inscription in Taxila.