Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c6.s2.t1.7

c6.s2.t1.7

While this kind of evidence will probably not be generally accepted very soon, it is to be hoped that the *argumentum ex silentio*, — the inference that a Vedic work which does not mention writing must have been composed when writing was unknown in India, — will be dropped. The *argumentum ex silentio* is certainly not conclusive, because the Hindus even at present, in spite of a long continued use of writing, esteem the written word less than the spoken one, because they base their whole literary and scientific intercourse on oral communications, and because, especially in scientific [4] works, writing and MSS. are mentioned very rarely. Though MSS., being *Sarasvatīmukha*, "the face of the goddess of speech," are held sacred and are worshipped, the Veda and the Sāstras exist, even for the modern Hindu, only in the mouth of the teacher, whose word has more weight than a written text, and they can only be learned properly from a teacher, not from MSS. Even in our days, the Hindus esteem only the *mukhasthā vidyā*, the learning which the Pandit has imprinted on his memory. Even in our days, learned discussions are carried on with reference to living speech, and even the modern poets do not wish to be read, but hope that their verses will become "ornaments for the throats of the learned" (*satāṃ kaṇṭhabhūṣaṇa*). As far as our observation reaches, this state of things has been always the same since the earliest times. Its ultimate cause probably is that the beginning of the Hindu Sāstras and poetry goes back to a time when writing was unknown, and that a system of oral teaching, already traceable in the Ṛgveda, was fully developed before the introduction of written characters. The reasons just stated do not permit us to expect many traces of the use of writing in the works of the schools of priests or Pandits, or to look in them for frequent references to letters and written documents. But, on the other hand, there is nothing to bar the conjecture, repeatedly put forward, that, even during the Vedic period, MSS. were used as auxiliaries both in oral instruction and on other occasions. And, as an argument in favour of this conjecture, it is now possible to adduce the indisputable fact that the Brāhmī alphabet has been formed by phonologists or by grammarians and for scientific use.¹