On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c7.s3.1

c7.s3.1

Hitherto two systems for the notation of the medial vowels have become known, that of the Edicts and all the later Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions and that of Bhaṭṭiprolu. The first, which is by far the older one, shows clearly the influence of the grammarians and their ingenuity. As the vowel, expressed in the beginning of words by the representative of the Semitic *Aleph*, occurs in Sanskrit nearly as frequently as all the other vowels taken together,¹ it was not expressed by any sign, but considered to be inherent in all signs for consonants. This device fully agrees with the system of nearly all the phonetic and grammatical treatises, which, as Professor Max Müller has shown so clearly, do not refer to written letters but only to sounds.² They almost invariably speak of the *kakāra*, *gakāra* [75] and so forth. The commentators no doubt are right, when they assert, that the vowel has been added in order to make the pronunciation of the consonants possible, and the vowel *a* was selected for this purpose on account of the frequency of its occurrence. It seems impossible to assume that there is no connexion between the two facts, and, as the grammarians base their theories on spoken words not on written texts, I think that they are the men who also in this case influenced the formation of the Brāhma alphabet.