Early South Indian Palaeography c8.s2.14

c8.s2.14

But it is doubtful whether in the evolution of writing we can distinguish between two distinct phases as the aesthetic and the utilitarian, for they seem to be inextricably fused together. Gordon Childe particularly stresses that the fact of the priestly origination of writing far from disproving the utilitarian theory only confirms it further for "the Sumerian priests invented writing not in their capacity of ministers of superstition but in that of administrators of a wordly estate. They, like Egyptian and Minoan scribes, used the invention not for magical or liturgical purposes but for practical business and administration".³⁷ While this is true, it does not take into cognizance the possibility of the prior existence of *pictures*, as such,³⁸ whose *raison d'etre* may not have been narration of events, and yet may have inspired the subsequent utilitarian picture writing. In the ultimate analysis, therefore, the birth of writing may not be wholly attributable to practical needs, though such needs may have been the immediate forces engendering it. There is at least one strong ground for this belief: the evolution of writing shows an unmistakable direction, viz., *from the decorative to the plain*, and throughout, the more thoroughly utilitarian writing is meant to be, the plainer it becomes.³⁹ When all evidence definitely establishes this uniform course in the development of writing, it should not be futile to study this evolution in the reverse and infer an original stage of pictures as such, pure and simple, the main concern behind which may not have been plain practical communication. If this stage can be considered a historical fact, then, writing has had an aesthetic and not an utilitarian origin.39a