Accent sign matters: the Niya prakrit grapheme  and its connection to Bactrian

Schoubben, N.

doi:doi:10.2143/JA.309.1.3289427

Persistent URL of this record https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3210585

View statistics

In Collections

This item can be found in the following collections:

Centre for Linguistics (LUCL)

Schoubben, N. (2021)

Accent sign matters: the Niya prakrit grapheme and its connection to Bactrian

Article / Letter to editor

The interpretation of the Niya Prakrit grapheme is an unsolved problem of the Kharoṣṭhī script. This article will argue that, at least in most cases, it represents Bactrian /šk/. After a brief note on the palaeography of the akṣara and its attestations in other forms of Gāndhārī, Bactrian etymologies will be proposed for some Niya Prakrit words containing this grapheme. As some of these words have been considered before key witnesses to the Tocharian C hypothesis (Burrow 1935b; 1937: vii-ix), this renewed understanding of has broader consequences for the issue of the linguistic substrate in Niya Prakrit.