I have a question about the so-called foot-mark in the Kharoṣṭhī in the Aśoka inscriptions in Shāhbāzgarhī and Mānsehrā, or if what A.H Dani says about it (Indian Palaeography, p. 260 and p. 149) is all there is. What I would like to know is if it has a meaning or not. According to Dani it hasn't. For, on p. 149, while trying to explain the foot-mark in the Bower manuscript (birch bark), he writes: "that the writer lifted his pen with a back stroke and hence resulted in an upward slant at the foot". But the stonemason of the Aśoka inscription was using a chisel, not a pen.