--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "kishore patnaik"
<kishorepatnaik09@...> wrote:
> "The earliest written record is the Piprawa vase inscription which
> was discovered by Col. Claxton Peppe. This inscription is written
> in Brahmi character and is in a language which does not conform to
> any of the standard Prakrits. Some of the case endings tend
> towards Magadhi. No compound consonant has been written. They have
> been either simplified or divided by epenthesis. No long vowel,
> excepting two 'e's have been used. The inscription has been
> differently interpreted. This certainly belongs to the early part
> of 5th c. bce... (From: A Concise History of Classical Sanskrit
> Literature. By Gaurinath Shastri, Gaurinath Bhattacharyya).
The old notion, dating back to the first half of the 20th century,
that the Piprawa vase inscription (see pictures at pp. 7 and 8 of
the pdf document at <
http://tinyurl.com/5vqsxc>) is pre-Mauryan, is
no longer adhered to by scholars in Indian epigraphy and
paleography, the majority of whom now think that the inscribed
Piprawa Reliquary is due to the redistribution of the Buddha
Shakyamuni's bodily relics carried out by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka
in the 3rd century BCE. Others even think it to be post-Mauryan.
See the updates contained in Richard Salomon, _Indian Epigraphy: A
Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the
Other Indo-Aryan Languages_, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998
(Salomon is a world-class specialist in Sanskrit and Prakrit
language and literature, epigraphy, ancient Indian history, and
Gandharan studies):
http://tinyurl.com/5erkhj
http://tinyurl.com/58vdcy
http://tinyurl.com/5lwpro
Hipe this is of some help,
Francesco