Brāhmī script
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| Brāhmī | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type | Abugida | |
| Spoken languages | Early Prakrit languages | |
| Time period | perhaps 6th, and certainly 3rd, century BCE, to c. 3rd century CE | |
| Parent systems | Proto-Canaanite alphabet[1] → Phoenician alphabet[1] → Aramaic alphabet[1] → Brāhmī |
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| Child systems | Gupta, Pallava, and numerous others. | |
| Sister systems | Kharoshthi [1] | |
| ISO 15924 | Brah | |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Brāhmī script refers to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of alphabets. The best known inscriptions in Brāhmī are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka, dating to the 3rd century BCE. These were long considered the earliest examples of Brāhmī writing, but recent archaeological evidence in South India[2] and Sri Lanka[3][4] suggest the dates for the earliest use of Brāhmī to be around the 6th century BCE, dated using radiocarbon dating and thermoluminescence, though these dates are controversial.
This script was ancestral to most of the scripts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, and perhaps even Korean Hangul. The Brāhmī numeral system was the ancestor of the Arabic numerals, which are now used world-wide.
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[edit] Origins
Brāhmī is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script for imperial edicts. It has commonly been supposed that the script was developed at around this time, both from the paucity of earlier dated examples, the alleged unreliability of those earlier dates, and from the geometric regularity of the script, which some have taken to be evidence that it had been recently invented.[5] Recent claims for earlier dates include fragments of pottery from the trading town of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, which have been dated to the early 5th century BCE; discoveries in Bhattiprolu in Andhra Pradesh; and on pieces of pottery in Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu, which have been radio-carbon dated to the 6th century BCE.[2]
Brāhmī is believed by most scholars to be derived from a Semitic script such as the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, as was clearly the case for the contemporary Kharosthi alphabet that arose in a part of northwest Indian under the control of the Achaemenid Empire. Rhys Davids suggests that writing may have been introduced to India from the Middle East by traders. Another possibility is with the Achaemenid conquest in the late 6th century BCE,[citation needed] or that it was a planned invention under Ashoka as a prerequiste for his edicts.
A glance at the oldest Brāhmī inscriptions shows striking parallels with contemporary Aramaic for the phonemes that are equivalent between the two languages, especially if the letters are flipped to reflect the change in writing direction. (Aramaic is written from right to left, as was Brāhmī originally, whereas Brāhmī later came to be written from left to right.) For example, both Brāhmī and Aramaic g resemble Λ; both Brāhmī and Aramaic t resemble ʎ, etc.
However, Semitic is not a good phonological match to Indic, so any Semitic alphabet would have needed extensive modification to represent Brahmi. Indeed, this is the most convincing circumstantial evidence for a link: The similarities between the scripts are just what one would expect from such an adaptation. For example, Aramaic did not distinguish dental from retroflex stops; in Brāhmī the dental and retroflex series are graphically very similar, as if both had been derived from a single prototype. Aramaic did not have Brāhmī’s aspirated consonants (kʰ, tʰ), whereas Brāhmī did not have Aramaic's emphatic consonants (q, ṭ, ṣ); and it appears that these emphatic letters were used for Brāhmī's aspirates: Aramaic q for Brāhmī kh, Aramaic ṭ (Θ) for Brāhmī th (ʘ). And just where Aramaic did not have a corresponding emphatic stop, p, Brāhmī seems to have doubled up for its aspirate: Brāhmī p and ph are graphically very similar, as if taken from the same source in Aramaic p. The first letters of the alphabets also match: Brāhmī a, which resembled a reversed κ, looks a lot like Aramaic alef, which resembled Hebrew א. (See the illustration above for some examples.)
| Phoenician | Brahmi | Devanagari |
|---|---|---|
 |
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अ |
 |
 |
ग |
 |
 |
त |
 |
 |
थ |
 |
 |
द |
 |
 |
प |
According to others, Brāhmī was a purely indigenous development, perhaps with the Indus script as its predecessor; these include the English scholars G.R. Hunter and F. Raymond Allchin. In northern India, there is a gap of over one thousand years between the Indus script and Brāhmī, making a connection difficult, though it is possible this gap will be narrowed with future discoveries.
[edit] Characteristics
Brāhmī is usually written from left to right, as in the case of its descendants. But a coin of the 4th century BCE has been found inscribed with Brāhmī characters running from right to left[6]. Brāhmī is an abugida, meaning that each letter represents a consonant, while vowels are written with obligatory diacritics. When no vowel is written, the vowel /a/ is understood. Special compound letters are used to write syllables that begin with consonant clusters, such as /pr/ or /rv/.
[edit] Usage
| History of the alphabet |
|---|
|
Middle Bronze Age 19 c. BCE
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| Meroitic 3 c. BCE |
| Ogham 4 c. CE |
| Hangul 1443 CE |
| Canadian syllabics 1840 CE |
| Zhuyin 1913 CE |
| complete genealogy |
Brāhmī and its sister Kharoshthi are the two oldest alphabets of India. While Kharoshthi was only used in Afghanistan and northwestern India, Brāhmī was used across the Subcontinent. Over time, differing regional forms and styles of Brahmi developed into many descendant scripts. Kharoshthi, on the other hand, fell out of use without leaving any descendants.
Like Kharoshthi, Brāhmī was used to write the early dialects of Prakrit. Its usage was mostly restricted to inscriptions on buildings and graves as well as liturgical texts. The earlier Sanskrit had not been written down while it was natively spoken[citation needed], and was only written many centuries later. As a result, Brāhmī is not a perfect match for Sanskrit, as several Sanskrit sounds have no letter or diacritic in Brāhmī.
[edit] Descendant writing systems
| The Brahmic script and its descendants |
|---|
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Brāhmī
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Brāhmī evolved into many different scripts, which are commonly divided into a more rounded Southern India group and a more angular Northern India group. Over time, certain scripts became associated with specific languages. Alphabets of the Southern group spread into Southeast Asia, while the Northern group spread into Tibet. Today descendants of Brāhmī are used throughout India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Burma, Thailand, Laos, and scattered enclaves in Indonesia, southern China, southern Vietnam, and the Philippines. As the script of Buddhist scripture, Brahmic alphabets are used for religious purposes throughout China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
Although not universally accepted, it has been claimed that Hangul was based on Phagspa script, used in the Mongol Empire, the descendant of Tibetan alphabet. Canadian Aboriginal syllabics may also show systematic similarity with principles and characters of Brāhmī.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d The link between Brahmi and Middle Eastern scripts is disputed, see Origins of Brahmi.
- ^ a b Subramanian, T.S., Skeletons, script found at ancient burial site in Tamil Nadu
- ^ Deraniyagala on the Anuradhapura finds International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, Proceedings of the XIII International Congress of the Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences. 1996.
- ^ *Coningham, Robin, University of Bradford Anuradhapura Project
- ^ Richard Salomon, Brahmi and Kharoshthi, in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systemes, 1996
- ^ Brahmi - Crystalinks
[edit] Further reading
- Kenneth R. Norman, The Development of Writing in India and its Effect upon the Pâli Canon, in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens (36), 1993
- Oscar von Hinüber, Der Beginn der Schrift und frühe Schriftlichkeit in Indien, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990 (in German)
- Gérard Fussman, Les premiers systèmes d'écriture en Inde, in Annuaire du Collège de France 1988-1989 (in French)
- Siran Deraniyagala, The prehistory of Sri Lanka; an ecological perspective (revised ed.), Archaeological Survey Department of Sri Lanka, 1992.
[edit] External links
- On The Origin Of The Early Indian Scripts: A Review Article by Richard Salomon, University of Washington (via archive.org)
- Brahmi project of the Indian Institute of Science
- Ancient Scripts - Brahmi
- Windows Indic Script Support
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