Context:
Recently, a Brahmi inscription was found in Dharanikota village at Amaravathi mandal in Palnadu district. The script on the inscription is written in Prakrit language and Brahmi characters of 2nd century C.E.
Relevance:
Facts for Prelims
About Brahmi Inscription:
- Brahmi script is the oldest writing system developed in India after the Indus script.
- It’s one of the most influential writing systems; all modern Indian scripts and several hundreds of scripts found in Southeast and East Asia are originated from Brahmi.
- The majority of Brahmi inscriptions discovered in North and Central India represent the Prakrit language.
- The oldest known Brahmi inscriptions: from the edicts of Ashoka, the third Mauryan emperor of Magadha who ruled most of the sub-continent between 268 and 232 BCE.
- The only finds of the script are in short broken pieces throughout the Gangetic plains but also elsewhere on excavated sites in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Sri Lanka, mostly on pieces of pottery.
- Including all these are descendant scripts of Brahmi-the-scripts-of-the-Indo-Gangetic Plain, such as Devanagari and the Bengali and Gujarati scripts; the-scripts-of-Deccan, including scripts for Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada.
-Source: The Hindu
