Dear Stephen, Ardavarz and Geoff,

thank you very much for your explanations and weblinks. Stephen's
explanation is concise and clear, the links provided by Ardavarz and
Geoff are good resources for further research into this area. Geoff's
link has an illustration which really illuminates Stephen's explanation.

Thanks again.

metta,
Yong Peng.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Hodge wrote:

There is a very old Skt mss called the Spitzer Manuscript, dating from
the 200 CE, which is written in a very fluent, sophiscated Brahmi
hand. This kind of script then developed further with the rise of the
Gupta dynasty, with the emergence of the so-called Imperial Gupta
script, which was presumably based on one of the currrent regional
cursive Brahmi scripts in fashion in the area of the Gupta court.
With this script, we are more than half-way to Devanagari, which
gradually develops from Gupta script after the Pala Dynasty.