Carl Ludwig Grotefend

Carl Ludwig Grotefend (22 December 1807 – 27 October 1874)^[1] was a German epigraphist, philologist and numismatist. He played a key role in the decipherment of the Indian Kharoshthi script on the coinage of the Indo-Greek kings, around the same time as James Prinsep, publishing Die unbekannte Schrift der Baktrischen Münzen ("The unknown script of the Bactrian coins") in 1836.^[2][3] He was the son of the famous philologist Georg Friedrich Grotefend, who made the first successful attempts at deciphering Old Persian cuneiform.^[2][4]

It is thought that Carl Ludwig Grotefend independently accomplished the first decipherment of the Kharoshthi script (1836, in Blätter für Münzkunde, Germany)^[5] around the same time as Prinsep (1835, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, India),^[6] as Grotefend was "evidently not aware of the latter's article".^[7]

In 1839, he wrote Die Münzen der griechischen, parthischen und indoskythischen Könige von Baktrien und den Ländern am Indus ("The coins of the Greek, Parthian and Indo-Scythian kings of Bactria and the countries on the Indus").^[8]

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  Decirpherment of Kharoshthi by C.L. Grotefend in Blatter fur Munzkunde in 1836.^[5]
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  Coin plate, by Carl Ludwig Grotefend (1839)
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  Kharoshthi on a coin of Indo-Greek king Artemidoros Aniketos, reading "Rajatirajasa Moasa Putasa cha Artemidorasa". The obverse has the same legend in Greek.