OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF SANSKRIT 65 Semitic alphabet, but the exact source from which it is adapted and also the period remain uncertain. It is suggested that it may have been introduced from the South Semitic area by means of the trade routes to the ports of Western India, and the period most commonly assumed is about 500 b.c. The work of adaptation was considerable since it involved not only the addition of vowel signs, but also the changes and additions necessary to express adequately the Indian conson- antal system. The perfection with which the task was accom- plished was consequent on the labours of the ancient Indian phoneticians whose achievements have already been mentioned. In spite of this, use of writing was only slowly adopted in the Brahmin schools, and in the early period its function lay primarily in business and administration and only secondarily as an instrument of literature. For this reason all the earliest records preserved are in Prakrit, and Sanskrit documents only appear later. It is unlikely that much literature existed in manuscript form before the second century b.c. The early Brahm! alphabet was comparatively uniform and served for the whole of India outside the small area where Kharosthi was in use. After the Christian era local variations were intensified and Brahmi developed into a variety of regional alphabets differing from each other as much as they had changed from the original form. The structural principles of the alphabets always remained the same but the individual shapes of the letters W'ere subject to endless variation. In North India the alphabet gradually evolved into what is now known as Devanagari. With the introduction of printing this alphabet was adopted generally for Sanskrit, but before this period Sanskrit manuscripts were written in the various regional alphabets of the localities where they w^ere produced, e.g. Sarada in Kashmir, Bengali, Oriya, Telugu-Kanarese, Malay- alam and, in the Tamil country, Grantha. The commonest material used for writing in India was palm- leaf. The exclusive use of this prevailed in South India down to modern times. The characters w r ere incised on this material by means of a stylus and the ink rubbed in afterwards. In the North, particularly in Kashmir, the inner bark of the birch was used on which the letters were WTitten in ink. This method was also used in the North for palm-leaf manuscripts, and the dif- ferences between the Northern and Southern alphabets is largely
