PROF. SWAMINATHAN WILL BE RENDERING A LECTURE IN DETAIL
at 630 pm TODAY (14.10. - THURSDAY )
AT 33/15 - ELDAMS ROAD.... TERRACE OF KIZHAKKU PADHIPPAGAM PUBLICATIONS. ALWARPET - CHENNAI 600018.
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6. Early Indian scripts Brahmi & Kharoshthi
Introduction: (This is contained in the slide presentation also) WE NOW come to India.
I start with an introduction to the `Early Indian Scripts'.
It is unfortunate that our most ancient writing, is still unintelligible.
How much we can learn about ancients' life and culture if only Indus script has been deciphered! Hence the presentation skips the Indus script, which is waiting to be completely understood. The presentation skips the Indus script, which is waiting to be completely understood. The Kharoshthi and Brahmi are given detailed treatment. However the Khroshthi story ends rather abrupt, as it has died without varisu. Kharoshthi and Brahmi are get detailed treatment. However the Khroshthi story ends rather abrupt, as it has died without varisu. Two millennia pass after the Indus writing before we have the deciphered scripts of our land: Kharoshthi and Brahmi. Kharoshthi left no descendents. But why, I would like to know. It was being written extensively in the North-western greater India. We find them on the then media, birch-bark and on coins. Why there are no descendents to Kharoshthi, whereas it is from Brahmi all Indian languages got their script? Was it because it was in some way inconvenient, like being written from right to left? Some of you might see samples of Kharoshthi for the first time in my presentation. Both the scripts, Brahmi and Kharoshthi, have some common features, like being syllabic and being made of simple, short strokes. There are also differences, the chief being the direction of writing. Kharoshthi, as mentioned before, was written from right to left. As it was with Rosetta Stone, deciphering Brahmi and Kharoshthi became possible because of bi-lingual coins. The Alexander invasion may or may not have been good for India. That it helped indirectly deciphering both Brahmi and Kharoshthi is fortuitous. Some Indo-Greek kings who ruled in Afghanistan and the Punjab from about 200 - 25 BCE recorded their names and titles in Greek and in Brahmi or Kharoshthi. And it was because of the untiring effort of James Princep (1799-1840), a qualified architect who came to India to work in the Mint at the age of 20 and worked himself to death unraveling the mystery of Brahmi, that we are able to follow the messages of the compassionate Asoka and trace our hoary antiquity. `The Brahmi Story' I find to be exciting. Why exciting? Let me mention two features of Brahmi. It seems to me to be the earliest, truly syllabic script. That is, each character is a syllable, that is, a vowel or a consonant-vowel, just suited for writing Indian languages. Its functional elegance is another aspect that might interest us. Most letters are simple geometrical shapes. The construction of consonant-vowels (like ka, kaa, ki, kii, etc) is systematic and uniform for all consonants. This you will see in the presentation. If there is a contender for single script for all Indian languages, we have this one invented 2500 years ago that fits the bill. Our children, who are being tortured to write complicated our 'jilebi' scripts, would be thankful to us! It looks that there was no writing before the time of Asoka, or, put differently, we find no trace of writing before Asoka. Then the question is how a vibrant civilization managed without writing. This aspect is focused in the presentation. Various theories on the origin of Brahmi are current. There is one aspect that puts the Brahmi script and the scripts for most Indian languages in a special category. This is the existence of post-consonantal diacritic signs (sorry, I should avoid jargon), that is, making it possible to write consonant-vowel, (again another jargon!), that is, 'uyir-mey' letters, and also of the existence of signs for conjunct consonants, that is, kUTTezhuttu, like ksha, except for Tamil. This is unique to India. In the scripts like Aramaic or Greek, the two scripts from which some people claim that Brahmi had descended from, this feature for conjunct consonant does not exist. Actually these have consonants and vowels written separately. I consider it is quite inconceivable that the Asokan scribers took Aramaic or Greek, added symbols for voiced (t is unvoiced and d is voiced) and aspirated (th, dh etc) sounds, then added symbols for sibilants (s, sh etc), arranged according to the mode of production of sound, then added symbols for conjunct consonants, etc. All Indian scripts have these special features. This sophistication was perhaps because India had the advantage of possessing a very sophisticated knowledge of phonology and grammar prior to `inventing' scripts. Because of this its alphabet were organized scientifically. The letters were divided into vowels and consonants, and both these arranged according to the articulation in the mouth. Presence of consonant-vowels and of conjunct consonants makes the script syllabic. There is one more direction we would consider. The poetic meter of Sanskrit (Chandas) is based on syllables. Even Vedic hymns are set to poetic meters. The scripts adopted for Sanskrit, namely Devanagari and Grantha, are both fully syllabic scripts. That is each character is a syllable, meaning each character is either vowel or consonant-vowel. This is so for Prakrit dialects also. Thus any script that would be used for these languages would have to be syllabic and Brahmi fits the bill. The making of Brahmi script, and perhaps of Kharoshthi, it is surprising to note, was initiated and completed in one life time, namely, during the reign of Asoka, actually after the Kalinga war! Added to this is the fact that during his time itself the script travelled all over India and Srilanka. The script was not used by the emissaries of Asoka only, but by the Jains, which is the case in the Tamil country. The earliest writing we have is those of Asoka, his edicts all over his mighty empire. Travelling through time and topography the script provided the basis for the scripts for all Indian languages. Now became curvilinear to suit the new media, the palm-leaf and the birch-bark. A condensed version travelled to Bengal and Assam. Another version descended from the north to the west, eventually to become Devanagari, which became most widely-used and widely-travelled script. Would it be wrong to say that India provided both the letter their scripts - and the spirit of the Buddha - to the East? Brahmi is the mother script of most of the Asian languages, of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Thai, Laos, Khmer, Cambodia, Vietnam etc. This happened through the political and the cultural conquest by the Indian rulers starting from the Pallava-s. The Pallava-s developed a script, called Grantha or Pallava Grantha, to write Sanskrit in the Tamil country and was the inspiration to these Asian scripts. The content of the 53-slide presentation is given below. 6. Early Indian Scripts Brahmi and Kharoshthi Harappan script, yet undeciphered; Post-Harappan situation: Brahmi and Kharoshthi; Theories on origin of Brahmi; Inscriptions in Brahmi; Alphabet of Brahmi: vowels, consonants and consonant-vowels; Asokan edict at Lauria Nandangarh illustrated; Kharoshthi; Takshasila inscription illustrated; Kharoshthi alphabet; James Princep, bilingual coins and deciphering Brahmi and Kharoshthi; Brahmi's Asian descendents