81 
1891.] A. F. R. Hoernle —On the date of the Bower Manuscript. 
the whole, I am disposed to believe that there are really only three 
distinct styles of writing represented in the entire manuscript. The 
first is that of the first and fifth portions (A and E) ; they are so nearly 
alike, that I believe them to be of the same scribe. The second is that 
of the second portion (B), which is a fine, ornamental writing. It must 
be ascribed to a distinct scribe. The third is that of the third and 
fourth portions (C and D), which seem to me to differ more in the 
manner than in the character of writing, and may not improbably be 
due to the same scribe, thongh a different person from the scribes of 
AE and B. 
I come now to the question of the age of the MS. Here the first 
points to be settled are the locality and class to which the characters of 
the MS. belong. Mr. Fleet has clearly shown, in his Volume III of the 
Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum on the Gupta Inscriptions,* that, irre¬ 
spective of varieties, there existed, at the time of the Gupta period, two 
very distinct classes of the ancient Nagari alphabet, the North Indian and 
the South Indian (see Fleet, pp. 3, 4). The test letter for these two 
great classes is the character for m, which in the Southern alphabets 
retains its old form , resembling the figure 8, while in the Northern 
alphabets that old form has been displaced by a square cursive form r J. 
Tried by this test, it is at once seen that the alphabet of our MS. be¬ 
longs to the Northern class. Throughout the MS. the square form V is 
used exclusively. It is particularly distinct in the portions C and D ; in 
ABE the left hand curved line in drawn rather more straight. 
The Northern class of alphabets, however, is again divided into two 
great sections, which, though their areas overlap to a certain extent, 
may be broadly, and for practical purposes sufficiently, distinguished as 
the Western and Eastern sections. The test letter in this case is the 
cerebral sibilant sha. In the North-Eastern alphabet its form is while 
in the North-Western alphabet its form is U .f Examples of the 
former alphabet we have on the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudra 
Gupta, of about 400 A. D. (Fleet, pp. 1, 6), the Kuhaun pillar inscrip¬ 
tion of Skanda Gupta, of 460 A. D. (Fleet, p. 65), and others in Mr. 
Fleet’s volume. * The same alphabet is shown to perfection in the 
* All subsequent references to “ Fleet ” refer to this work. 
f At the same time the Indian N. E. alphabet has the form for the dental 
sa , the two forms of sha and sa being very little distinct from one another. The 
Indian N. W. alphabet has for sa which is also used by the Nepalese variety 
of the N. E. alphabet. 
t The following Nos. in Mr. Fleet’s volume belong to this class: Nos. 1, 6, 7 
8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 64, 66, 68, 69; occasionally the Western form is used in con- 
juncts, such as hsha , sh(a. 
L 
