Editing Brahmi script (section)

===Decipherment===
[[File:Classification of Brahmi characters by James Prinsep, March 1834, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Volume 3 (March1834).jpg|thumb|Classification of Brahmi characters by [[James Prinsep]] in March 1834. The structure of Brahmi (consonantal characters with vocalic "inflections") was properly identified, but the individual values of characters remained undetermined, except for four of the vocalic inflections. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Volume 3 (March 1834).<ref name="RSP">{{harvnb|Salomon|1998|pp=204–208}} Equally impressive was Prinsep's arrangement, presented in plate V of JASB 3, of the unknown alphabet, wherein he gave each of the consonantal characters, whose phonetic values were still entirely unknown, with its "five principal inflections", that is, the vowel diacritics. Not only is this table almost perfectly correct in its arrangement, but the phonetic value of the vowels is correctly identified in four out of five cases (plus anusvard); only the vowel sign for i was incorrectly interpreted as o.</ref>]]
[[File:AgathoklesCoinage.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Norwegian scholar [[Christian Lassen]] used the bilingual Greek-Brahmi coinage of [[Indo-Greek]] king [[Agathocles of Bactria|Agathocles]] to correctly achieve in 1836 the first secure decipherment of several letters of the Brahmi script, which was later completed by [[James Prinsep]].<ref name="RS204" /><ref>{{cite book |title=Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol V 1836 |page=723 |url=https://archive.org/stream/JournalOfTheAsiaticSocietyOfBengalVolV1836/Jasb1836Full#page/n837 |language=en}}</ref>]]
[[File:Brahmi script consonants according to James Prinsep March 1838.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Consonants of the Brahmi script, and evolution down to modern [[Devanagari]], according to [[James Prinsep]], as published in the Journal of the [[Asiatic Society of Bengal]], in March 1838. All the letters are correctly deciphered, except for two missing on the right: 𑀰(ś) and 𑀱(ṣ).<ref>{{cite book |title=Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. |date=1838 |publisher=Calcutta : Printed at the Baptist Mission Press [etc.] |url=https://archive.org/stream/journalofasiatic775asia#page/n101}}</ref> Vowels and compounds [[:File:Brahmi script vowels according to James Prinsep March 1838.jpg|here]]. All scripts derived from Brahmi are gathered under the term "[[Brahmic scripts]]".]]
Besides a few inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic (which were only discovered in the 20th century), the [[Edicts of Ashoka]] were written in the Brahmi script and sometimes in the [[Kharoshthi script]] in the northwest, which had both become extinct around the 4th century CE, and were yet undeciphered at the time the Edicts were discovered and investigated in the 19th century.{{sfn|Salomon |1998 |pp=204–206}}<ref name="RHP" />

Inscriptions of the 6th century CE in late Brahmi were already deciphered in 1785 by [[Charles Wilkins]], who published an essentially correct translation of the [[Gopika Cave Inscription]] written by the [[Maukhari]] king Anantavarman.<ref name="RS202">{{harvnb|Salomon|1998|pp=206–207}}</ref> Wilkins seems to have relied essentially on the similarities with later [[Brahmic scripts]], such as the script of the [[Pala Empire|Pala period]] and early forms of [[Devanagari]].<ref name="RS202" />

Early Brahmi, however, remained unreadable.<ref name="RS202" /> Progress resumed in 1834 with the publication of proper facsimiles of the inscriptions on the [[Allahabad pillar]] of [[Ashoka]], notably containing [[Edicts of Ashoka]] as well as inscriptions by the [[Gupta Empire]] ruler [[Samudragupta]].<ref name="RS204">{{harvnb|Salomon|1998|pp=204–208}}</ref>

[[James Prinsep]], an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the [[East India Company]], started to analyse the inscriptions and made deductions on the general characteristics of the early Brahmi script essentially relying on statistical methods.<ref name="RS204" /> This method, published in March 1834, allowed him to classify the characters found in inscriptions, and to clarify the structure of Brahmi as being composed of consonantal characters with vocalic "inflections". He was able to correctly guess four out of five vocalic inflections, but the value of consonants remained unknown.<ref name="RS204" /> Although this statistical method was modern and innovative, the actual decipherment of the script would have to wait until after the discovery of bilingual inscriptions, a few years later.<ref name="DanielsBright1996">{{cite book |last=Daniels |first=Peter T. |author-link=Peter T. Daniels |editor1=Peter T. Daniels |editor2=William Bright |title=The World's Writing Systems |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ospMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA144 |year=1996 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-507993-7 |pages=141–159, 151 |chapter=Methods of Decipherment |quote=Brahmi: The Brahmi script of Ashokan India (SECTION 30) is another that was deciphered largely on the basis of familiar language and familiar related script—but it was made possible largely because of the industry of young James Prinsep (1799-1840), who inventoried the characters found on the immense pillars left by Ashoka and arranged them in a pattern like that used for teaching the Ethiopian abugida (FIGURE 12). Apparently, there had never been a tradition of laying out the full set of aksharas thus—or anyone, Prinsep said, with a better knowledge of Sanskrit than he had had could have read the inscriptions straight away, instead of after discovering a very minor virtual bilingual a few years later. (p. 151) |access-date=2021-03-20 |archive-date=2021-12-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211209214228/https://books.google.com/books?id=ospMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA144 |url-status=live}}</ref>

The same year, in 1834, some attempts by Rev. J. Stevenson were made to identify intermediate early Brahmi characters from the [[Karla Caves]] ({{circa|1st century CE}}) based on their similarities with the [[Gupta script]] of the [[Samudragupta]] inscription of the [[Allahabad pillar]] (4th century CE), which had just been published, but this led to a mix of good (about 1/3) and bad guesses and did not permit proper decipherment of the Brahmi.<ref>{{cite book |title=Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. |date=1834 |pages=495–499|publisher=Calcutta : Printed at the Baptist Mission Press [etc.] |url=https://archive.org/stream/journalofasiatic334asia#page/n31}}</ref><ref name="RS204" />

The next major step towards deciphering the ancient Brahmi script of the 3rd–2nd centuries BCE was made in 1836 by Norwegian scholar [[Christian Lassen]], who used a bilingual Greek-Brahmi coin of [[Indo-Greek]] king [[Agathocles of Bactria|Agathocles]] and similarities with the [[Pali]] script to correctly and securely identify several Brahmi letters.<ref name="RHP" /><ref name="RS204" /><ref name="ACXII">{{cite book |title=Four Reports Made During the Years 1862-63-64-65 by Alexander Cunningha M: 1/ by Alexander Cunningham. 1 |date=1871 |publisher=Government central Press |page=XII |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x9jNVBV97kkC&pg=RA1-PR12 |language=en |access-date=2019-05-25 |archive-date=2021-02-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210226040713/https://books.google.com/books?id=x9jNVBV97kkC&pg=RA1-PR12 |url-status=live}}</ref> The matching legends on the bilingual coins of Agathocles were:

{{blockquote|Greek legend: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ  /  ΑΓΑΘΟΚΛΕΟΥΣ (''[[Basileus|Basileōs]] Agathokleous'', "of King [[Agathocles of Bactria|Agathocles]]")<br />
[[Brahmi]] legend:<big>𑀭𑀚𑀦𑁂  /  𑀅𑀕𑀣𑀼𑀼𑀓𑁆𑀮𑁂𑀬𑁂𑀲</big> (''Rajane Agathukleyesa'', "King Agathocles").<ref>{{cite book |title=Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol V 1836 |page=723 |url=https://archive.org/stream/JournalOfTheAsiaticSocietyOfBengalVolV1836/Jasb1836Full#page/n837 |language=en}}</ref>}}

[[James Prinsep]] was then able to complete the decipherment of the Brahmi script.<ref name="RS204" /><ref name="Asiatic Society of Bengal 1837">{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/journalasiatics06benggoog |title=Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal|last=Asiatic Society of Bengal|date=1837|others=Oxford University|language=en}}</ref><ref name="RHP" /><ref name="asi.nic.in">[http://asi.nic.in/asi_monu_whs_sanchi_detail.asp More details about Buddhist monuments at Sanchi] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721165126/http://asi.nic.in/asi_monu_whs_sanchi_detail.asp |date=2011-07-21}}, Archaeological Survey of India, 1989.</ref> After acknowledging Lassen's first decipherment,<ref>[[:File:Announcement of the decipherement of Brahmi letters by Lassen in the JASB in 1836.jpg|Extract of Prinsep's communication about Lassen's decipherment]] in {{cite book |title=Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol V 1836 |date=1836 |pages=723–724 |url=https://archive.org/stream/JournalOfTheAsiaticSocietyOfBengalVolV1836/Jasb1836Full#page/n837/mode/2up |language=en}}</ref> Prinsep used a bilingual coin of Indo-Greek king [[Pantaleon]] to decipher a few more letters.<ref name="ACXII" /> James Prinsep then analysed a large number of donatory inscriptions on the reliefs in [[Sanchi]], and noted that most of them ended with the same two Brahmi characters: "𑀤𑀦𑀁". Prinsep guessed correctly that they stood for "''[[:File:Danam letters on Sanchi inscription.jpg|danam]]''", the [[Sanskrit]] word for "gift" or "donation", which permitted to further increase the number of known letters.<ref name="RS204" /><ref>{{cite book |title=Four Reports Made During the Years 1862-63-64-65 by Alexander Cunningha M: 1/ by Alexander Cunningham. 1 |date=1871 |publisher=Government central Press |page=XI |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x9jNVBV97kkC&pg=RA1-PR11 |language=en |access-date=2019-05-25 |archive-date=2021-08-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210815170004/https://books.google.com/books?id=x9jNVBV97kkC&pg=RA1-PR11 |url-status=live}}</ref> With the help of Ratna Pâla, a [[Sinhalese people|Singhalese]] Pali scholar and linguist, Prinsep then completed the full decipherment of the Brahmi script.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Keay |first1=John |title=To cherish and conserve the early years of the archaeological survey of India |date=2011 |publisher=Archaeological Survey of India |pages=30–31 |url=https://archive.org/details/tocherishconserv00keay/page/30}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Four Reports Made During the Years 1862-63-64-65 by Alexander Cunningha M: 1/ by Alexander Cunningham. 1 |date=1871 |publisher=Government central Press |page=XIII |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x9jNVBV97kkC&pg=RA1-PR13 |language=en |access-date=2019-05-25 |archive-date=2021-06-02 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210602131809/https://books.google.com/books?id=x9jNVBV97kkC&pg=RA1-PR13 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Salomon |1998 |p=207}}<ref>''Ashoka: The Search for India's Lost Emperor'', [[Charles Allen (writer)|Charles Allen]], Little, Brown Book Group Limited, 2012</ref> In a series of results that he published in March 1838 Prinsep was able to translate the inscriptions on a large number of rock edicts found around India, and provide, according to [[Richard G. Salomon (professor of Asian studies)|Richard Salomon]], a "virtually perfect" rendering of the full Brahmi alphabet.<ref>{{cite book |title=Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. |date=1838 |publisher=Calcutta : Printed at the Baptist Mission Press [etc.] |pages=219–285 |url=https://archive.org/stream/journalofasiatic775asia#page/n51}}</ref>{{sfn|Salomon |1998 |p=208}}