4 ms·
It's written in a script which didn't exist yet in the 3rd/4th century, which seems to rather disprove the earliest 224-383 dates, unless people want to argue t
by arp242 3y ago
It's written in a script which didn't exist yet in the 3rd/4th century, which seems to rather disprove the earliest 224-383 dates, unless people want to argue that this script was in use hundreds of years before we thought it was.
It does seem to fit fairly well with the 680-779 dates, which also fits with when the 0 symbol started being used. 885-993 seems a bit too late, though not strictly impossible.
I'm a bit confused why the 224-383 date is even offered as a serious possibility by the researchers, because to me (admittedly as a non-expert) they seem highly unlikely and should have been dismissed as a fluke. This seems more driven by sensationalism and/or nationalism than anything else.
- civilitty 3y agoI think carbon dating has undue influence because most other methods of dating things are rather wishy washy and open to interpretation compared to cold hard quantifiable radioisotope ratios. Most people don’t know how complicated radiocarbon calibration can be and when to question the data.
- 1sembiyan 3y agoIt’s in a proto-sharada script, which it seems can be dated to earlier than 5th century. There’s no consensus on dating of the Bakhshali manuscript however: https://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/feature-column/fc-2018-06 https://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/feature-column/fc-2018-06
- Topgamer7 3y agoUnder the `Date` heading: > Prior to the proposed radiocarbon dates of the 2017 study, most scholars agreed that the physical manuscript was a copy of a more ancient text,
- arp242 3y agoPerhaps, but that's not very relevant for the dating of this specific physical piece of text.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago> unless people want to argue that this script was in use hundreds of years before we thought it was. Is that script attested in hundreds of other (dated) works, such that this really is absurd... or is it attested by two or three other works which might have been misdated themselves? I ask because I genuinely do not know. With one sort of answer, it seems like it could be as absurd as you suggest, but with the other sort of answer it seems like there could be the possibility of it being that old.
- MrRolleyes 3y ago[dead]