Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s12.30

c12.s12.30

The Indian Brāhmī alphabet is in all likelihood a derivative of the Mohen-jo-Daro script. But it is strange that a knowledge of writing should have been obtained by the later Dravidians from the North Indian Aryan speakers round about the time of Christ, if the Mohen-jo-Daro people were really the ancestors of the Dravidians. It is likely that the Mohen-jo-Daro script of *c.* 2500 and later was a very complicated thing, and when the Aryan alphabet was evolved out of it as a simpler system of writing after the Mohen-jo-Daro civilization had become moribund through Aryan impact as well as internal decay, and the people probably scattered, the simpler alphabet associated with a new and a vigorous people of a composite origin such as the ancient Hindus, descendants of both Aryans and non-Aryans, won the day,—making the more complicated, syllabic script of early Mohen-jo-Daro obsolete; and this alphabet, as well as the Aryan language of which it was the vehicle, became a conquering force in the South—the old script being no longer current among a probably dispersed people—during the closing centuries of the first millennium B.C.