English: Consonants of the Brahmi script according to James Prinsep March 1838. All the letters are correctly deciphered, except for two [ 𑀰 (ś) and 𑀱 (ṣ) ] missing on the right. In Essays on Indian Antiquities, Vol. 2, on pages 40-42, Edward Thomas writes:

“I have copied, literatim — in pi. xxxvii., xxxviii. — his original synopsis; but as his labours in elucidation of these and other cognate alphabets, were detached and scattered over many volumes and numbers of the Journal he so long and efficiently edited, I have taken advantage of the facilities afforded by the imitative faculty of our German neighbours — who have reproduced, in movable types, these and some further varieties of the local characters first deciphered by my author — to introduce into a printed table many of the older forms omitted in the lithograph; and I have further profited by the progress of type-founding, to add to the general series certain provincial alphabets, which illustrate the literal changes incident to independent naturalization, as well as those due to epochal departure from the parent stock.

“It will be seen from this observation, that I have ventured to differ from my elsewhere usually accepted authority; but in this case, [James Prinsep’s] unvarying frankness and candour have of themselves paved the way for my justification, and I doubt not that, had his intellect been spared to us, he would himself have been prompt to reduce to a more consistent and mature theory, the imperfect hypothesis somewhat hastily enunciated on the initiatory publication of these facsimiles.

”The general subject of the rise and transitional development of Indian alphabets spreads itself over various sections of research, and requires to be considered from different points of vi»w, the more prominent of which I will endeavour to recapitulate as concisely as possible.

“I. Regarding the probable date of the earliest rise of the type of character, of which Asoka’s edicts present us with the first extant example, Prinsep hazarded an opinion that two centuries of anterior currency might fairly be assigned to that style of writing. This idea presupposed somewhat of an exclusively sacred character, as pertaining to the alphabet, but by no means implied that the literal series did not pre-exist in an earlier or less perfect form. A conjectural limit of this description may of course be indefinitely extended or contracted, but I myself should be disposed to enlarge considerably the period of the previous culture of so perfect and widely-spread a system of alphabetical expression.

“II. As respects the derivation of the literal series, Prinsep had clearly a leaning towards associating it with the Greek, grounded upon the similarity and almost identity of some of the forms of each, the phonetic values even of which fell into appropriate accord. That these similitudes exist there can be no doubt, but not in sufficient numbers or degree to authorize an inference that the one system borrowed directly from the other. Prof. Weber, following out Prinsep’s idea in another direction, has sought to establish a Phoenician origin for the Indian alphabets.”