Brāhmī script

Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing. Recent discoveries have revealed earlier epigraphy in Tamil-Brahmi, a Southern Brahmic alphabet found on pottery in South India and Sri Lanka dating from before the 6th century BCE Sangam period. Southern Brahmi gave rise to Tamil Brahmi, Vatteluttu and Pallava Grantha scripts that diversified into many South East Asian scripts like the Mon script in Burma, the Javanese script in Indonesia and the Khmer script in Cambodia. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the Middle Ages, including Siddham, Sharada and Nagari. The script was deciphered in 1837 by James Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the British East India Company.^[1] Like its contemporary in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, Kharoṣṭhī, Brāhmī was an abugida.

Brāhmī was ancestral to most of the scripts of South Asia and Southeast Asia, several Central Asian scripts such as Tibetan and Khotanese, and possibly, in part, Korean Hangul. The varga arrangement of Brāhmī was adopted as the modern order of Japanese kana, though the letters themselves are unrelated.^[2]

Disupted Origins

The actual parent script of Brahmi is disputed. One school claims that Aramaic is the mother script; the other claims it as a sister script.

Finding origins from Vedas

According to this hypothesis, the origins of the Brahmi script can be traced to the Vedic period. The name Brahmi for the script of all Indian languages has come from Vajasaneyi Pratishakshya (8-25), which calls the letters of the alphabet as Brahma Rashi meaning universal units of spoken words. The name Brahmi lipi arose from the said description for that part of the Vedas, which can be written. In the Vedas, each letter of the alphabet is pronounced in not less than 18 ways (three divisions of hraswa, deergha, pluta based on time factor, three divisions of udatta, anudatta and swarita based on the position of the particular organ in the mouth while pronouncing that letter, and two divisions of nasal or non-nasal. Since each group is independent of the others, the total number of pronouncements come to 18. There may be further divisions). Since it is not possible to record these differences and they must be remembered by listening to it properly, the Vedas were not written, but was learned by hearing from the teacher, hence why they were called shruti. Ignorance of these principles have led many to propose different theories on the assumption that there was no system of writing or script in ancient India. Since the Vajasaneyi Pratishakshya is accepted to have been written before 8th Century BC, the Brahmi script dates back al least to 8th Century BC.

Indus Script Origin

Some scholars, such as F. Raymond Allchin, take Brāhmī as a purely indigenous development, perhaps with the Bronze Age Indus script as its predecessor. The Indus hypothesis has been challenged for the lack of any intervening evidence for writing during the millennium and a half between the collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation ca. 1900 BCE and the first appearance of Brahmi in the mid-4th century BCE.^[3]

S.R. Rao's Analysis

Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao (Kannada: ಶಿಕಾರಿಪುರ ರಂಗನಾಥ ರಾವ್) (born 1922) is an Indian archeologist who led teams credited with the discovery of a number of Harappan sites including the port city of Lothal in Gujarat. He also discovered the ancient city of Dwarka. Rao (1992)^[4] In a detailed chapter in his book 'Dawn and devolution of the Indus civilization' he attempted a deciphering of the Indus Script. In this, he notes a number of striking similarities in shape and form between the late Harappan characters and the Phoenician letters, arguing than the Phoenician script evolved from the Harappan script, challenging the classical theory that the first alphabet was Proto-Sinaitic. He got a Sanskritic reading from the Indus Seals.^[5]

Aramaic hypothesis

The origin of Brāhmī remains doubtful. However, a weak consensus exists among scholars for link with Aramaic^[6]. According to the Aramaic hypothesis, the oldest Brāhmī inscriptions shows striking parallels with contemporary Aramaic for the sounds that are congruent 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 left to right.) For example, both Brāhmī and Aramaic g resemble Λ; both Brāhmī and Aramaic t resemble ʎ, etc.

Brāhmī does feature a number of extensions to the Aramaic alphabet, as would be required to write more sounds. For example, Aramaic did not distinguish dental stops such as d from retroflex stops such as ḍ, and in Brāhmī the dental and retroflex series are graphically very similar, as if both had been derived from a single Aramaic prototype. Aramaic did not have Brāhmī’s aspirated consonants (kh, th, etc.), whereas Brāhmī did not have Aramaic's emphatic consonants (q, ṭ, ṣ – the dot diacritic here has a different meaning from the retroflex stops of Brāhmī), and it appears that these unneeded emphatic letters filled in for Brāhmī's aspirates: Aramaic q for Brāhmī kh, Aramaic ṭ (Θ) for Brāhmī th (ʘ), etc. And just where Aramaic did not have a corresponding emphatic stop, p, Brāhmī seems to have doubled up for the corresponding aspirate: Brāhmī p and ph are graphically very similar, as if taken from the same source in Aramaic p. The first letter of the two alphabets also match: Brāhmī a, which resembled a reversed κ, looks a lot like Aramaic alef, which resembled Hebrew א. The following table compares Brāhmī with Phoenician and Aramaic.

* Both Phoenician/Aramaic and Brahmi had three voiceless sibilants, but because the alphabetical ordering was lost, the correspondences among them are not clear.

Not accounted for are the six Brahmi consonants bh, gh, h, j, jh, ny, some of which could conceivably derive from the three Aramaic consonants with no obvious correspondence. (Brahmi ng was a later development.)

Pre-Ashokan epigraphy

The earliest likely contact of the Hindu Kush region with the Aramaic script occurred in the 6th century BCE with the expansion of the Achaemenid Empire under Darius the Great to the Indus valley. It appears that no use of any script to write an Indo-Aryan languages occurred before the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE, despite the evident example of Aramaic. Megasthenes, an ambassador to the Mauryan court only a quarter century before Ashoka, noted explicitly that the Indians "have no knowledge of written letters",^[7] although there is some disagreement as to whether this is the correct interpretation of what he said^[8] and some other ancient sources likewise disagree.^[9] This lack, if true, might be explained by the cultural importance at the time (and indeed to some extent today) of oral literature for history and Hindu scripture.^[10]

There have been claims that fragments of Brāhmī epigraphy found in Tamil Nadu^[11] and Sri Lanka date as far back as the 5th or 6th century BCE,^[12] which have been taken as evidence for an early spread of Buddhism.^{[3] [5]}

However, evidence for pre-Mauryan Brahmi inscriptions remains inconclusive, restricted to pottery fragments with possible individual glyphs. The earliest complete inscriptions remain the 3rd-century-BCE Ashokan texts. Many early post-Ashokan remains show regional variation thought to have developed after a period of unity across India during the Ashokan period.

Ashokan inscriptions

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.^[13]

Early regional variants

The earliest Ashokan inscriptions are found across India—apart from the Kharosthi-writing northwest—and are highly uniform. By the late third century BCE regional variants had developed, due to differences in writing materials and to the structures of the languages being written. For example, Tamil-Brahmi had a divergent system of vowel notation.

The earliest definite evidence of Brahmi script in South India comes from Bhattiprolu in Andhra Pradesh.^[14][15] The Bhattiprolu script was written on an urn containing Buddhist relics, apparently in Prakrit and old Telugu. Twenty-three letters have been identified. The letters ga and sa are similar to Mauryan Brahmi, while bha and da resemble those of modern Telugu script.

Characteristics

Brāhmī is usually written from left to right, as in the case of its descendants. However, a coin of the 4th century BCE has been found inscribed with Brāhmī running from right to left, as in Aramaic.

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 conjunct consonants are used to write consonant clusters such as /pr/ or /rv/. In modern Devanagari conjunct consonant are written left to right to join them as one composite character whereas in Brāhmī characters are joined vertically downwards.

Vowels following a consonant are written by diacritics, but initial vowels have dedicated letters. There are three vowels in Brāhmī, /a, i, u/; long vowels are derived from the letters for short vowels. However, there are only five vowel diacritics, as short /a/ is understood if no vowel is written.

Punctuation^[16]

Punctuation can be perceived as more of an exception than as a general rule in Asokan Brāhmī. For instance, distinct spaces in between the words appear frequently in the pillar edicts but not so much in others. ("Pillar edicts" refers to the texts that are inscribed on the stone pillars oftentimes with the intention of making them public.) The idea of writing each word separately was not consistently used.

In early Brāhmī period, the existence of punctuation marks is not very well shown. Each letter has been written independently with some space between words and edicts occasionally.

In the middle period, the system seems to be in progress. The use of a dash and a curved horizontal line is found. A flower mark seems to mark the end, and a circular mark appears to indicate the full stop. There seem to be varieties of full stop.

In the late period, the system of interpunctuation marks gets more complicated. For instance, there are four different forms of vertically slanted double dashes that resemble "//" to mark the completion of the composition. Despite all the decorative signs that were available during the late period, the signs remained fairly simple in the inscriptions. One of the possible reasons may be that engraving is restricted while writing is not.

Four basic forms of the punctuation marks can be cited as:

• dash or horizontal bar
• vertical bar
• dot
• circle

Descendants

Over the course of a millennium, Brāhmī developed into numerous regional scripts, commonly classified into a more rounded Southern India group and a more angular Northern India group. Over time, these regional scripts became associated with the local languages. Alphabets of the Southern group spread with Hinduism and Buddhism 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, Cambodia, and in scattered enclaves in Indonesia, southern China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. As the script of Buddhist scripture, Brahmic alphabets are used for religious purposes throughout China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

Gary Ledyard has suggested that the basic letters of hangul were taken from the Phagspa script of the Mongol Empire, itself a derivative of the Brahmic Tibetan alphabet. Canadian Aboriginal syllabics also show systematic similarity with principles and characters of Brāhmī.

Etymology and legend of Brahmi

The name Brahmi is said to have come from a Jain Legend. According to South Indian legend the Jain thirthankara Vrushabhadeva explained the script to his daughters, Brahmi and Soundhary. Therefore as a mark of this, the writing script is called Brahmi and the numerals are called Soundhary.

Unicode

Brāhmī was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0.

The Unicode block for Brāhmī is U+11000 ... U+1107F:

See also

• Indian inscriptions
• Pre-Islamic scripts in Afghanistan

References

1. ^ More details about Buddhist monuments at Sanchi, Archaeological Survey of India, 1989.
2. ^ Daniels & Bright, The World's Writing Systems, Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-507993-0
3. ^ ^{a b} Salomon, Richard (1998), Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195099842  at pp 12–13
4. ^ see Koenraad Elst, Remarks in expectation of a decipherment of the Indus script
5. ^ ^{a b} Dr. Koenraad Elst, 'The Vedic Harappans in Writing'
6. ^ Encyclopedia Americana. International edition. Vol I. 1967. p. 620-621.
7. ^ Strabo on India
8. ^ John Duncan Martin Derrett (1976). Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law: Consequences of the intellectual exchange with the foreign powers. Brill. http://books.google.com/books?id=yH8eAAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA5&ots=cyrlwoPods&dq=%2BMegasthenes%20%2B%22have%20no%20knowledge%22&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q=+Megasthenes%20+%22have%20no%20knowledge%22&f=false. Retrieved 3 December 2011. 
9. ^ Bright, William (1990). Language variation in South Asia. Oxford University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=S7OGXVKtD7oC&lpg=PA138&ots=Sf8pcZ9gXj&dq=%2BMegasthenes%20%2B%22have%20no%20knowledge%22&pg=PA138#v=onepage&q=+Megasthenes%20+%22have%20no%20knowledge%22&f=false. Retrieved 3 December 2011. 
10. ^ Masica, Colin (1993). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=J3RSHWePhXwC&lpg=PA135&ots=xyBIY4upMv&dq=%2BMegasthenes%20%2B%22have%20no%20knowledge%22&pg=PA135#v=onepage&q=+Megasthenes%20+%22have%20no%20knowledge%22&f=false. Retrieved 3 December 2011. 
11. ^ Subramanian, T.S., Skeletons, script found at ancient burial site in Tamil Nadu
12. ^ Recent claims for earlier dates include fragments of pottery from the trading town of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, which have been dated to between the 6th and the early 4th centuries BCE (Salomon 1998); from Bhattiprolu;[1] and on pieces of pottery in Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu, which have been radio-carbon dated to the 6th century BCE (Subramanian 2004).
13. ^ Richard Salomon, "Brahmi and Kharoshthi", in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems
14. ^ "The Bhattiprolu Inscriptions", G. Buhler, 1894, Epigraphica Indica, Vol.2
15. ^ Buddhist Inscriptions of Andhradesa, Dr. B.S.L Hanumantha Rao, 1998, Ananda Buddha Vihara Trust, Secunderabad
16. ^ Ram Sharma, Brāhmī Script: Development in North-Western India and Central Asia, 2002

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.

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
• – Buddhist Text in Brahmi Script
• Windows Indic Script Support