Palaeography or paleography   is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysis of historic handwriting. It is concerned with the forms and processes of writing; not the textual content of documents. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of scriptoria. 

The discipline is one of the auxiliary sciences of history. It is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating historic texts. However, it generally cannot be used to pinpoint dates with high precision. 

Origin of Brahmi 

In spite of nearly two centuries of research on the history of writing in India, the precise origin of the Brahmi script, the principal script of early India, from which all the later South Asian and Southeast Asian scripts developed, has still remained improperly known. The origin of the Brahmi script has been a major debate in the realm of Indian epigraphy ever since its decipherment in the first half of the nineteenth century. Like most of the ‘origin theories’ scholarly world dealing with the origin of the Brahmi script is also divided into two ‘camps’, one advocating for an essentially Indian origin of the script, while the other providing evidence in support of an extraneous influence and/or derivation. Although systematic attempts at reconsidering the origin of the Brahmi script was initiated by scholars like Georg Buhler and G.H. Ojha, attempts were made at explaining the possible roots of this scripts well predate the researches of these two scholars. Recently Richard Salomon has made a comprehensive review of the literature dealing with the problem of the origin of this script. Here we may summarize the discussion on the issue in the light of the thorough review made by Salomon. 

Theories of Indigenous Origin: 

Among the early scholars dealing with the issue, Alexander Cunningham suggested that Brahmi had its root from a pictographic-logographic script and tried to explain the palaeography of some of the Brahmi letters in the light of a kind of ‘pictographic etymology’. His theory was, however, criticized for obvious reasons by Isaac Taylor and others. 

G.H. Ojha and later, following him, R.B. Pandey and T.P. Verma suggested that Brahmi of course had an indigenous genesis, though the precise route of the development leading to what is seen in the Asokan inscriptions explained by them. In the words of Richard Salomon: 

G. H. Ojha…was highly critical of Buhler’s Semitic derivation and was inclined to doubt any foreign derivation, though he avoided denying the possibility altogether. Ojha concluded that an indigenous origin is most likely, although the precise source and development cannot be specified. R. B. Pandey argued more categorically in favor of an indigenous origin, concluding that “the Brahmi characters were invented by the genius of the Indian people who were far ahead of other peoples of ancient times in linguistics and who evolved vast Vedic literature involving a definite knowledge of alphabet”. Since the discovery in the 1920s and subsequent decades of extensive written artifacts of the Indus Valley civilization dating back to the third and second millennia B.C., several scholars have proposed that the presumptive indigenous prototype of the Brahmi script must have been the Indus Valley script or some unknown derivative thereof. This possibility was first proposed by S. Langdon in 1931, supported by G. R. Hunter, and endorsed by several later authorities, most significantly by D. C. Sircar.’ 

It is important to note here that a protohistoric connection of the Brahmi script was also offered by B.B. Lal on the basis if some graffiti marks on pottery from a site called Vikramkhol and these were taken by Lal to argue an early antiquity of the Brahmi script, the ‘Vikramkhol inscriptions’ being explained as ‘missing links’ between Harappan and Early Brahmi scripts. However, Lal’s theory was not generally accepted. Some recent scholars have argued that Brahmi, as we see in the inscriptions of Asoka, must have had underwent preceding stage of development and refinement from a pre-existing system of writing, particularly in view of the uniform and monumental version of the script appearing in the Asokan edicts. There are also proposals based on textual reference in Buddhist, Jain and Classical literature that Indian knew the art of writing well before the Maurya period. 

Theories of Foreign Origin: 

Compared to the school of Indian origin, the group supporting a non-Indian origin of the script has more supporting evidence. This school, however, is again subdivided into a number of sub-schools. James Prinsep believed that Brahmi had evolved from the Greek script, obviously on the basis of the long-drawn cultural and political contacts of India with the Macedonian world. But Prinsep was only able to explain the palaeography of a few Brahmi letters as direct derivatives of Greek. A more refined theory of Greek derivation was later proposed by J. Halevy. However, the theory gained importance recently when Harry Falk accepted partially the proposal of Halevy and suggested a modified argument, explaining the derivation of the earliest version of Brahmi from and mixed Kharosthi and Greek progenitor. But here again, the problem was that none of these latter scholars could explain the systemic on which their theories of derivation rest. 

Scholars debating on the origin of Brahmi from a probable Semitic origin are, likewise, divided into two subgroups: those supporting a likely South Semitic origin and the others favouring the North Semitic derivation. Supporters of the South Semitic derivation have based their argument more on the direction of writing than the actual palaeographic features, as Salomon has rightly pointed out. Different branches of the North Semitic have been proposed by different authorities to have been the precursor of the early Brahmi script. The first scholar to have underlined a probable connection between Phoenician and Indian scripts was Ulrich Friedrich Kopp who as early as 1821 had prepared comparative tables in the light of forms of modern Indian scripts and their link with Phoenician. The most systematic and authentic study of the theme was undertaken by Albrecht Weber who made a thorough comparison of the Phoenician and early Brahmi. The theory was later presented in a more articulated and categorical frame by Buhler. An Aramaic origin of Brahmi was first suggested by A.C. Burnell in the year 1874. In terms of palaeographic development, a connection between early Brahmi and Aramaic is more favoured than that of Phoenician., 

Richard Salomon has rightly observed that instead of looking into the problem of origin of the Brahmi script in terms of the patterns of derivation of individual letter forms, it is important to consider the systemic that govern the 

‘The system of postconsonantal diacritic vowel indicators looks like a natural adaptation of the Semitic consonant-syllabic script for use in Indian languages. Similarly, the evident development of the retroflex consonants as modified forms of the corresponding dentals suggests an adaptation of a non-Indie prototype, since in an originally Indian system one would have expected independent signs for the two classes from the very beginning.’