Indian Palaeography c11.9

c11.9

The precedence of grammar over the Indian system of writing is indubitably proved by a critical analysis of the earliest examples of writing known in India.² The phonetic system of Indian grammar, though it conceives of vowels and consonants, still does not have pure consonants. Here we have a system which I. J. Gelb describes as being in the syllabic stage, but this syllabary has been further standardized. Each consonant, when not followed by an explicit vowel, inherently implies only one vowel, i.e. *a*, and no other. This peculiar characteristic of the Indian system is traced by Diringer³ ‘to the influence of the Aramaic language, in which the final *aleph* predominated’. But the necessity of this inherent *a* is also felt in the Sanskrit language, in which the consonants are required to be pronounced with some definite vowel unless they are explicitly characterized as vowelless. It is therefore not necessary to look further afield for this feature. The peculiar character of the Indian alphabet is the contribution of the Indian grammarians, and, whatever script has been used in India to express this language, this notion of the alphabet has remained constant. It is essential that the nature of this alphabet is understood before the question of the origin of any of the scripts is taken up.