From the 2nd century BC onwards writing becomes more and diversified. It has been suggested that the first signs of regional variations of script may already occur during the Mauryan period, but certainty by the first centuries BC and AD several clearly defined regional patterns of script begin to emerge. These are in some cases ancestral to the later development of the modern regional scripts.
The Brahmi script continued to occupy a dominant position. We find its increasing use in the records of religious donations at Bharhut, Sanchi, Amaravati and Bodh Gaya. From the early second century BC Brahmi inscriptions are found on coins. Among the earliest examples are the copper pancha nigama coins from Taxila.
When the Indo-Greeks appeared, they issued bilingual coins in Greek and Brahmi. In the southern coastal region a remarkable development of Brahmi, adapting it to the special phonetic requirements of Tamil, is found from the second-first centuries BC. In the northwest Kharoshthi continued to flourish and most of the known inscriptions in that area were written in this script between c.200 BC and AD 200.