Some remarks on the history of the Khotanese orthography and the Brāhmī script in Khotan

The article identifies an early Khotanese orthographic system, the Archaic Orthography to be added to the three well-known later systems used for Old and Late Khotanese. The Archaic Orthography is found in a few Old Khotanese wooden documents and literary manuscripts written in the earliest varieties of the Central Asian Brāhmī script. The article also shows that the Early Turkestan Brāhmī, Type 1, so far believed to have been used only in the northern oases of the Tarim basin, was used also in the south in Khotan and that it is at the basis of the Khotanese Documentary Script. The Khotanese Book Script originated instead as a calligraphic script from the local Early Turkestan Brāhmī script, Type 2, under the steady influence of manuscripts of Mahāyāna texts in North-western Gupta script from Gilgit and Northwest India due to the high consideration the Mahāyānists showed to their religious books, regarded as cultic objects and as a means of proselytism. An appendix discusses the language of a new wooden document in Archaic Orthography and the additional grammatical information it provides.