Dr.S.Srikanta Sastri

Official Website of Dr S.Srikanta Sastri,

(1904-1974)

M.A., D.Litt

Articles: Studies in Indus Scripts-II by Dr S.Srikanta Sastri

STUDIES IN THE INDUS SCRIPTS

The Vikramakhol Inscription and the Glozel Forgeries

The Vikramakhol inscription found in the Sambhalpur district, according to Mr. Jayaswal, gives a script that is a development of the Indus script and forms a middle stage in the development of Brahmi. Several resemblances to the script of the seals can be pointed out, but it is remarkable that almost all the characters in the Vikramakhol inscription have a remarkable likeness to the Glozel alphabet and are nearer to Kharoshti than to Brahmi. The discoveries at Glozel near Vichy in France in 1924 gave occasion to a furious controversy as to the genuineness of the finds. Drs. Elliot Smith and Reinach believed that the Glozel alphabet belonged to the Neolithic epoch in Europe in about 200 B.C. Mr. Jayaswal similarly dated the Vikramakhol inscription as roughly of about 1500 B.C. But M.Jullian considered that there was nothing Neolithic in the Glozel script and that it was merely “cursive Latin of the time of the Empire”; and it seems to be now generally accepted that the tablets are forgeries. But the remarkable resemblances between the Glozel and the Vikramakhol scripts still remain unaccounted for, unless we consider the latter too a forgery or detect a mere accidental coincidence. But the similarities appear to me so pronounced that we have to look to some other explanation.

It is now a generally accepted fact among scholars that in the first two millenniums B.C. there was a series of linear scripts – one linear semitic script near Sinai and another in Minoan II probably introduced by the Phaenicians. According to Reinach, the Cretan resemblances in the Glozel alphabet are beyond dispute, and probably the alphabet and pottery of Western Europe were modelled upon the linear scripts of the Mediterranean.