the book-hand by the Roman period; in early Ptolemaic papyri, a double point (:) is found. In vellum and paper manuscripts, punctuation marks and accents were regularly used from at least the 8th century, though with some differences from modern practice. At no period down to the invention of printing did Greek scribes consistently separate words. The book-hand of papyri aimed at an unbroken succession of letters, except for distinction of sections; in cursive hands, especially where abbreviations were numerous, some tendency to separate words may be recognised, but in reality it was phrases or groups of letters rather than words which were divided. In the later minuscule word-division is much commoner but never became systematic, accents and breathings serving of themselves to indicate the proper division. China India The view that the art of writing in India developed gradually, as in other areas of the world, by going through the stages of pictographic, ideographic and transitional phases of the phonetic script, which in turn developed into syllabic and alphabetic scripts was challenged by Falk and others in the early 1990s. In the new paradigm, Indian alphabetic writing, called Brāhmī, was discontinuous with earlier, undeciphered, glyphs, and was invented specifically by King Ashoka for application in his royal edicts. In the subcontinent, three scripts like Indus, Kharoṣṭhī and Brāhmī became prevalent. In addition, Greek and Arabic scripts were also added to the Indian context after their penetration in the early centuries of the common era (CE). The decipherment and subsequent development of Indus glyphs is also a matter for continuing research and discussion. After a lapse of a few centuries the Kharoṣṭhī script became obsolete; the Greek script in India went through a similar fate and disappeared. But the Brāhmī and Arabic scripts endured for a much longer period. Moreover, there was a change and development in the Brāhmī script which may be traced in time and space through the Maurya, Kuṣāṇa, Gupta and early medieval periods. The present day Nāgarī script is derived from Brāhmī. The Brāhmī is also the ancestral script of many other Indian scripts, in northern and southern South Asia. Legends and inscriptions in Brāhmī are engraved upon leather, wood, terracotta, ivory, stone, copper, bronze, silver and gold. Arabic got an important place, particularly in the royalty, during the medieval period and it provides rich material for history writing. Most of the available inscriptions and manuscripts