Indian Palaeography c11.6

c11.6

Before we tackle the problem, it is necessary to disabuse our minds and remember that the development of Brāhmī was not an isolated phenomenon. Its origin and growth are rooted in the civilization of the Ancient World of which India was a member. The discovery of the Indus pictographs or ideographs, or whatever that system of writing was, provides ample evidence of direct contact between India and the cultural centres of Western Asia. The appearance of the Indo-Aryans in history further strengthened this contact. Whether the Indian Aryans were literates or not is a different question, but it may be conceded that they were in contact with peoples who knew the art of writing. However, we have no definite evidence of the Indian Aryans practising this art. Ojha⁴ has given an analysis of the literary evidence and traced the concept of the letters (*akshara*), the vowels and the consonants, and the grouping of the last into *ghosha* consonants, *mūrdhanya* (cerebral), *dantya* (dental) letters, &c., in the *Upanishads* and the *Āraṇyakas*. In the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* (5. 32) he finds *oṁ* stated to be formed by the combination of *akāra*, *ukāra*, and *makāra*. Later still in the works of the grammarians we find minute descriptions of the letters, the rules for their combination, and the changes that they undergo. Yet we have no concrete evidence of alphabetic writing in India before the time of Aśoka. How then are we to explain these concepts evidenced in the early Sanskrit literature? Some may maintain that the Brahmins, being fastidious in the pronunciation of the Vedic *mantras*, were led to this phonetic analysis which found perfection in the hands of the grammarians, while others would surely find parallels in the contemporary attempts made in Western Asia at the evolution of an alphabet. It is in Western Asia alone that the different stages in the evolution of the alphabet are more or less clear, but in Sanskrit literature, until we come to the time of the grammarians, acquaintance with the vowels and the consonants is superficial. Diringer¹ rightly maintains the alphabet to be originally an invention possibly in one region; it is no wonder that the principle underlying alphabetic writing soon spread with trade and commerce, and it may be suggested that as the Brahmins found this principle a great help in their Vedic recitals, they developed it further in their grammatical treatises.