Kharoṣṭhī script

Kharoṣṭhī (also commonly transliterated Kharosthi or Kharoshthi) was an ancient Indic script associated especially with Gandhāra, a region centered around the Peshawar Valley and extending into parts of present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. The script was used from roughly the third century BCE into the fourth century CE, with the exact dates and geographical reach varying by evidence. Encyclopaedia Britannica describes it as a cursive, syllabic system written from right to left. The script should be distinguished from Gāndhārī, the Middle Indo-Aryan language most closely associated with it: one is a writing system, the other a language.

The origin of Kharoṣṭhī is commonly connected to Aramaic writing used in the eastern Achaemenid Empire. Richard Salomon's Encyclopaedia Iranica entry on Gāndhārī notes that the language was written in Kharoṣṭhī, derived from Aramaic used in regions including Gandhāra. Kharoṣṭhī adapted that script tradition to the sounds and writing practices of the region. It existed alongside Brāhmī, another ancient Indic script with a different historical development. Rather than a single standardized alphabet used everywhere, Kharoṣṭhī's forms and usage are documented across inscriptions, coins and manuscript materials.

Gāndhārī is the principal language represented in many surviving Kharoṣṭhī documents, but the script also appears in records reflecting the multilingual life of ancient trade and government. Encyclopaedia Iranica describes evidence from Buddhist dedicatory inscriptions, birch-bark and palm-leaf manuscripts, coin legends—including bilingual Greek and Gāndhārī legends—and legal and administrative wooden tablets from the Tarim Basin. Inscriptions associated with Aśoka's northwestern rock edicts are among the early evidence for Gāndhārī and Kharoṣṭhī. These varied records help researchers study historical language, political authority, religious communities and exchange across regions.

Birch-bark scrolls written in Gāndhārī using Kharoṣṭhī are among the oldest surviving substantial collections of Buddhist manuscripts. The University of Washington's Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project documents collections acquired by the British Library and other institutions, dating the manuscripts it studies broadly from the first century BCE to the third century CE. The British Library fragments include portions of multiple scrolls and Buddhist textual genres. Their study has expanded knowledge of early Buddhist literature in Gandhāra and provides evidence relevant to the movement and translation of Buddhist texts into Central and East Asia.

Kharoṣṭhī eventually ceased to be used as political, linguistic and cultural circumstances changed in the regions where it had circulated. Coins and inscriptions proved important to its decipherment in the nineteenth century, and continued manuscript discoveries have substantially enlarged the surviving corpus. Modern scholarship compares the script's inscriptions and manuscripts with other writing traditions and uses them alongside archaeological context to reconstruct the history of Gandhāra and its connections with neighboring regions. Many documents remain fragmentary, so readings and historical interpretations depend on careful philological work.