On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c7.s3.26

c7.s3.26

As the Brāhma *ha* goes back to a form of *He*, which is not found in any Phoenician alphabet, but occurs on the Assyrian weights, where also a *Taw* very similar to the Brāhma *ta* is found, the conjecture seems not altogether improbable that the Semitic alphabet may have come to India through Mesopotamia. And it would agree with such an assumption that passages in ancient Indian works prove the early existence of a navigation of the Indian Ocean and the somewhat [81] later occurrence of trading voyages, undertaken by Hindu merchants to the masūtras. Baudhāyana,¹ Dh. S. II, 2, 2, forbids them to the orthodox Brahmans and prescribes a severe penance for a transgression of the prohibition. But he admits, Dh. S. I, 2, 4, that such transgressions were common among the "Northerners", or strictly speaking, the Aryans living north of the author's home, the Dravidian districts. The other forbidden practices, mentioned in the same Sūtra as customary among the Northerners, such as the traffic in wool and in animals with two rows of teeth, (horses, mules, etc.), leave no doubt that the inhabitants of Western and Northwestern India are meant. It follows as a matter of course that their trade was carried on with Western Asia. The same author, Dh. Ś. I. 18. 14 and Gautama, X. 33 fix also the duties, payable by shipowners to the king. Even from still earlier times there is the story of a shipwreck, the scene of which must have been the Indian [82] Ocean. Numerous hymns of the Ṛgveda mention the mighty deed of the twin brethren, the Aśvins, who saved Bhujyu, the son of Tugra, from the sea, "where, as one account says,² there is no support, no rest for the foot or the hand, after he had ascended the hundred-oared galley," of the two deities.