Indian Palaeography c8.34

c8.34

The most important contribution of this period was the discussion of the origin of the Brāhmī and the Kharoshṭhī scripts. This question was treated by the same method of the formal comparison of signs as was used in the description of the Indian scripts themselves. Bühler, in his work *On the Origin of the Indian Brāhma Alphabet*, sums up the views of the earlier scholars on both these scripts. While his conclusion on Kharoshṭhī has been usually accepted, the problem of Brāhmī still remains controversial. Bühler sought to meet opposing arguments by propounding the theory that Brāhmī also was originally written from right to left, relying mainly on the doubtful evidence of a faulty coin from Eran.¹ This contention has been further supported by D. C. Sircar,² on the evidence of the Duwe Gala cave inscription from Ceylon, and David Diringer³ says that the Yerragudi minor rock edict 'leaves no doubt that the *boustrophedon* style was known in the time of Aśoka'. All these examples are quoted to establish a closer link on the formal basis between Brāhmī and one of the Semitic group of alphabets. But D. C. Sircar concludes: 'This fact [i.e. writing from right to left] again connects the Brāhmī alphabet with the prehistoric writing of the Indus Valley from which it was undoubtedly derived.' It was Cunningham who first suggested that Brāhmī was to be derived from some pictographic writing in India. Since the discovery of the Indus Valley Script this suggestion has been supported by several scholars. Hunter claims to have worked out the vowel notation in the Indus Valley and connects it with that of Brāhmī. But the gap between the destruction of the Indus Valley civilization and the first appearance of the Brāhmī inscriptions has led many scholars to view this suggestion with doubt. However, Ojha alone has analysed the literary sources and tried to establish the existence of the concepts of vowels and consonants and even the whole Indian phonological system much earlier than their first appearance in the written records now available to us. He maintains that this system was the invention of the Aryans in India and that Brāhmī, as the very name suggests, is the outward expression of this system. This view of Ojha has been recently summarized by Raj Bali Pandey,¹ who explains the absence of specimens of writing before the fifth century B.C. in India by maintaining that ‘early Brahmanical literature and books were written on leaves, birch-bark and later on hand-made paper. Such frail and perishable materials could not be preserved for a long time’.² This statement is contradicted by the well-known evidence that the sacred literature of the Aryans was not committed to writing but passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation.