page_title: Brahmi script
section_title: Heliodorus Pillar inscription
hierarchical_section_title: Brahmi script / Early Brahmi or "Ashokan Brahmi" (3rd-1st century BCE) / Some famous inscriptions in the Early Brahmi script / Heliodorus Pillar inscription
caption_attribution_description: English: Heliodorus pillar Rapson rubbing inverted
context_page_description: Brahmi is the modern name for a writing system of ancient India. The Brahmi writing system, or script, appeared as a fully developed universal one in South Asia in the third century BCE, and is a forerunner of all writing systems that have found use in South Asia with the exception of the Indus script of the third millennium BCE, the Kharosthi script, which originated in what today is northwestern Pakistan in the fourth or possibly fifth century BCE, the Perso-Arabic Scripts of the medieval period, and the Latin scripts of the modern period. Its descendants, the Brahmic scripts, continue to be in use today not only in South Asia, but also Southeast Asia. Brahmi is an abugida which uses a system of diacritical marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols.
  Several divergent accounts of the origin of the name "Brahmi" appear in history and legend. Several Sutras of Jainism such as the Vyakhya Pragyapti Sutra, the Samvayanga Sutra and the Pragyapna Sutra of the Jain Agamas include a list of 18 writing scripts known to teachers before the Mahavira was born, with the Brahmi script leading all these lists.
context_section_description: The Heliodorus pillar is a stone column that was erected around 113 BCE in central India in Vidisha near modern Besnagar, by Heliodorus, an Indo-Greek ambassador of the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas in Taxila to the court of the Shunga king Bhagabhadra. Historically, it is one of the earliest known inscriptions related to the Vaishnavism in India.
caption: Heliodorus pillar rubbing (inverted colors). The text is in the Brahmi script of the Sunga period.[173] For a recent photograph.
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