1901.] 
Section III. Manuscripts. 
11 
Characters. 
according to the photographic specimen published by Professor S. von 
Oldenburg in the Transactions of the Imperial Russian Archaeological 
Society, Vol. VII, pp. 81, 82 (1892), measures about 31-x 19| inches. 
All the Pothis are written in Br&hmi characters, but of two 
different types. One is an upright type, the 
other is slanting. The latter occurs only in 
two Pothis, viz ., No. 2 of Set I, and No. 1 of Set II. The difference of 
the two types is not so well seen in single letters, as in a whole page ; 
compare figs. 1 and 2 of Plate II. There are also some specific dif¬ 
ferences in the formation of certain letters, especially in the forms of the 
vowels u, a (initial) and i and e (medial) and the consonants k, m and y. 
They may be seen in columns 21 and 22 of Table II; and they are fully- 
explained in my Reports in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 
Vol. LXII (1893), pp. 4, 5 and Vol. LXVI (1897), pp. 3-5, 45. The 
slanting type of Brahmi has, so far as I know, never been observed in 
India: it appears to be a special Central Asian modification of the 
erect type which is proper to India. In India this type of the Brahmi 
is known as the Gupta script, so named after the Imperial Gupta dynasty 
which ruled in Northern India about 319-530 A.D., and during whose 
rule, principally, it was current. Its period may be said to comprise 
roughly four centuries, from 300 to 700 A.D. From the fact that 
Pothis written in both, the upright and slanting, types were found in the 
Kuchar Stupa, it is clear that they were contemporary styles of writing. 
It seems to me that the fact of the co-existence of the two types may be 
best explained by assuming that the Pothis in the erect script were 
written by Natives of India, Buddhist propagandists who had migrated 
to Central Asia, while the slanting script was evolved by such Natives 
of Eastern Turkestan as had become converts to Buddhism. 
With regard to the upright type of Gupta, three distinct varieties 
can be distinguished. I believe the distinction 
Their Varieties. , , , £ 
to be a mark ot a dirterence m age. The earlier 
variety, shown in Columns 7-12 of Table II, is found in Pothi No. 1 of 
Set I (Macartney MSS., No. 2) ; also in the Bower MSS., and in the 
Weber MSS., Parts I, II, III, (see Plate I, figs. 1-3 in Journal, Asiatic 
Society of Bengal, Vol. LXII of 1893), all of which belong to the Kuchar 
stupa find. A later variety, shown in Column 18, is found only in the 
Pothi No. 6 of Set II; and another later variety, shown in Columns 
16 and 17, is found in the remainder of the Pothis of the two Sets. 
Both these later varieties are quite unknown in India. • They also share 
with the Central Asian slanting type the peculiar formation of the medial 
vowels i and e. Moreover the second of the two later varieties is marked 
by a curious angularity and absence of cursiveness, which suggests that 
