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]
![Decirpherment of Kharoshthi by C.L. Grotefend in Blatter fur Munzkunde in 1836.[5]](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Decirpherment_of_Kharoshthi_by_C.L._Grotefend_in_1836.jpg)
