On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c5.124

c5.124

[31] The discovery of the Gayā alphabet possesses, as Sir A. Cunningham has pointed out, considerable importance for the history of Indian writing. As its fragments are arranged on phonetic principles and as they include the guttural *ṅa*, which never occurs in the old Prakrit inscriptions, it must have been framed for the requirements of Sanskrit. And it is at least highly probable that its formation is due to the Brahmans, whose influence and peculiar theories are also recognisable, as will appear further on, in the manner of the derivation of the secondary signs from the original ones. In the third century B. C., it appears, the state of things in the elementary schools was the same as in our days. The children learnt an alphabet which was not intended for their vernacular dialects, and this was no doubt due to the circumstance that already then (as later when the legend regarding Buddha’s Brahminical writing-master Viśvāmitra arose, and also in modern times) the elementary instruction was chiefly in the hands of the Brahmans, who did not think it worth the while to alter for the sake of their Prakrit speaking pupils the alphabet, invented and suited for the peculiar *bhāṣā* of their schools and class.