On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c5.61

c5.61

With respect to the instruction in writing, there is, as stated above, something more in the beginning of the Kaṭāhaka Jātaka. "When the son of the Sheth, the story says, learnt writing, the slave (Kaṭāhaka) too went with him carrying his board and (*thus*) learnt writing.” The sentence indicates, that the Sheth’s son did not receive instruction at home, but went to a master, who presumably kept a school. The mention of the “board” (*phalaka*) is very interesting. It agrees with the narrative of the Northern Buddhist Lalitavistara, according to which young Siddhārtha, the future Buddha, on going to the school of the Brahman Viśvāmitra, brought with him “a golden pencil and a tablet of red sandal wood”.¹ And the actualities in the indigenous schools of Western, Northern, Central and Eastern India² furnish the necessary commentary on the two passages. Nearly everywhere the board or wooden tablet is still in use for the first instruction in writing, and it is either covered with sand in which the letters are drawn with a small stick, or it is varnished and the letters are drawn with a stick, smeared with a solution of white chalk instead of ink.³ It is [15] evident that the Lalitavistara and the Jātaka refer to the method of instruction, which is still followed, and the information, conveyed by the latter and Mahāvagga I. 49, makes it probable that elementary schools existed at the period, when the Buddhist canon was composed, and that their curriculum was about the same as that of the indigenous Pāṭhśālās, Lehsaḍs, Niśāḷs (*i. e.* \*Lihśālās) and Tolls of modern India.