Kharoṣṭhī or Kharoṣṭrī is the name of a particular script used in Afghanistan, the Punjab, and portions of Central Asia from the fourth or fifth centuries before Christ to the third or fourth centuries of the Christian era. In the third or fourth centuries a.d. it gradually went out of use, the place being taken by one or more forms of the mediaeval Brāhmī. In the eighteenth century the earlier generation of epigraphists and archæologists used to call this script “Bactrian”, “Indo-Bactrian”, “Bactro-Pali”, “Ariano-Pali”, etc. Then it was identified with the Kharoṣṭhī or Kharoṭṭhī lipi, on the evidence of the Fa-wan-shu-lin. The Chinese work describes the “ass-lip” (Kham-oṣṭha in Sanskrit) script, invented by one Kharoṣṭha, in which the writing ran from the right to left. This identification, proposed by George Bühler, has since met with general acceptance.