Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s12.29

c12.s12.29

The advancement of a language is not possible without writing, and the Aryan speech came to be written down in all likelihood at a time when it made it possible for the Veda books to be compiled ; and this may well have taken place during the 10th century B.C., which is the date of the Mahābhārata battle and of Vyāsa, according to F. E. Pargiter and Hemchandra Raychaudhuri. The discovery of the Mohen-jo-Daro and Harappa script, with characters seemingly the pictorial prototypes of the Brāhmī letters of the 4th-3rd centuries B.C., now enables us to discard the theory of the Phoenician origin of the ancient Indian alphabet. The Brāhmī script in its oldest form—the proto-Brāhmī of the 10th century B.C. showing but an intermediate stage between the Mohen-jo-Daro script of c 2500 B. C. and the finished Brāhmī of 300 B.C.—could not be, as is natural in a similar situation, the finished alphabet with a scientific and etymologically sound orthography which we see in the Maurya and post-Maurya times. It was at the best a makeshift script, acting rather as a mnemonical writing than a proper and a complete alphabet. The orthography of Brāhmī as used for Prākrit in the 3rd century B.C. is not yet complete ; thus, e.g. certain consonant combinations are cumbrously made, and double consonants are not indicated at all (vassa being written as vasa or as vāsa). It was still a rather stumbling medium for the Prākrit dialects; it was much more so for Sanskrit. The Kharoshṭhī script current in the Udicya country during the period 400 B.C.—A.D.400 is admittedly of Semitic origin, a legacy of the Syrian scribes in the employment of the Achaemenian sirkar in India ; and its existence in India was an isolated episode, as isolated as the phenomenon of Gandhāra art. The name would appear to be a folk-etymology in India (whether khara+oshṭha or ‘ass-lip’ character as advocated by Sten Konow, or Khara-ushṭra or ‘ass-and-camel country’ character, as sought to be established by Sylvain Lévi, it is not necessary to take sides) of a Semitic word for ‘writing’ which we find in Hebrew as Xarošeθ (Kharosheth). The discovery of an inscription of the 4th-3rd century B.C. in Aramaic (Syriac) at Taxila, which has been read by Herzfeld, giving the name of ‘our Lord Priyadarśi’ (mr’n prydrś) is a direct proof of the contact of India with Aramaic writing, and helps us to envisage the origin of Kharoshṭhī.