On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c5.81

c5.81

An additional argument for the antiquity of the writing, mentioned in the books of the Pali Canon, is furnished by the technical terms which they employ. They exclusively use for writing, writers and letters words which mean "to cut", *chind*, "to scratch" *likh*, "the scratcher" *lekhaka*, "scratching" or "scratches", *lekha*, and "the indelible" *akkhara*. On the other hand the word *lipi*, which Pāṇini, circiter 350 B. C.,¹ has in the compounds *lipikara* and *libikara*, "writer", is not found in the Buddhist canonical works known to me, nor is there in Childers' Dictionary any quotation for it from the Canon. For *lipi* two explanations have been proposed. According to the older opinion it is derived from *lip* ‘to smear’, like *kṛṣi* ‘agriculture’ from *kṛṣ* to plough’, and like a number of other substantives formed by the feminine affix *i*. According to others,¹ it is a corruption of the Old Persian *dipi* ‘writing’, which corruption was favoured by a fancied connexion with the verb *lip*. Though *lipi* might be a perfectly regular derivative from *lip*, and might appropriately have been used to denote ‘letters’ and ‘the alphabet’ on the introduction of writing with ink, the derivation becomes doubtful through the fact that the verb *limpati* is not used in the sense of ‘he writes’. And the impressions of the Shāhbāzgarhī version of Aśoka’s Edicts have furnished a strong argument for the adherents of the second view. For they show that in the Gandhāra dialect *lipi* is represented by *dipi* and that the verbs *dipati* ‘he writes’