WRITING SYSTEMS IN INDIA

Sanskrit and Prakrits are derivatives of the Indo-Aryan family of languages, however their exact relationship is debated. The brahmin s, who followed the Vedas used Sanskrit as the language of their rites and rituals, and preferred keeping both Sanskrit and sacred and knowledge restricted to privileged caste groups. One way of ensuring this was strict oral transmission and the active discouragement of writing. By comparison, the sramanas such as Jains and Buddhists, who rejected the authority of the Vedas, preferred passing on religious insights and various forms of knowledge to the masses––Jain mythology puts great emphasis on essential equality of all people, and in one view, of all beings––and for this purpose they preferred Prakrits, since those languages were commonly understood. They also pioneered writing, and Prakrits are closely linked to the script called Brahmi. In India, sramanas , especially Jains, also helped in formalizing scripts for regional languages. Brahmi-derived scripts have been used for languages derived from Prakrit-Sanskrit and also have been adapted for languages with other origins, including the Dravidian, Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, and various South East Asian groups of languages. Thus, sramanas have had an impact on most extant writing systems in South and South East Asia in direct or indirect ways.

This monograph posits that Brāhmī is a syllabic script and is NOT derived from logo-graphic catalogue system of Indus Script. However, the following excerpts from a monograph by Subhash Kak are presented to present a contra view. Subhash Kak claims to have identified the 'signs' used in Indus Script Corpora to signify the numerals 5 and 10 and also to have identified parallels in orthography between Brāhmī 'syllabary' for consonants and 10 Indus 'signs'. Surprisingly some of the glyphs, like the fish, looked similar in Brāhmī and in Indus Script. Such striking similarity is noticed in about 5 glyphs. "Kak also sees a particular Prakrit feature in the Indus script which is not found in Elamite and Dravidian. This particular feature — the gentive case marker — is used to specify ownership which could mean that the seals were used for trading purposes. Frequency analysis of the Indus script found that one of the signs is a representation of the numeral 5. The Nagari script, used since 8 CE, also uses the same sign; in Brāhmī, this sign means ‘pa’ – the first letter of ‘pancha’. Brāhmī.inscriptions found in Sohagaura on copper plates and caskets in Batthiprolu shows various compound signs, like in the Indus." http://varnam.nationalinterest.in/2009/11/the-indus-script-decipherments/ Further suggestions from Kak's studies (see Sources listed at the end) are that the Indus Script is based on underlying Indo-Aryan language (since Brāhmī. syllabary was used to write Indo-Aryan language) and that Brāhmī writing system is derived from the Indus Writing System. Excerpts: After Table 3. Kak (1988)Ten most common consonants in decreasing frequency Hunter, G.R.1934. The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and Its Connection with Other Scripts, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. • • Witney, W.D. 1888. Sanskrit Grammar, Reprint, 1983, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. • "Since our objective, in this study, is to determine what letters the most likely Indus signs could represent, and then validate this on morphological grounds, we only indicate the most likely 10 consonants in decreasing frequency: t, r, v, n, m, y, s, d, p, k The frequency of each one of these consonants is greater than 1.99 percent. The next most frequent sounds are s (palatal sh) and s (lingual sh) with frequencies of 1.57 and 1.45 respectively. It is conceivable that like Prakrit, early Indo-Aryan could have often substituted s for s and s. If this were to have been the case the total frequency of s could be close to that of t... • Numerals. Consider numerals now. Frequency considerations suggest that should be the symbol for the number 5. This is seen in Figure 3b which shows that there is large probability that will appear together with symbols for 2, 3, and 4. The frequency of with 1 is 7 and with itself is 10 which do not, therefore, show up in Figure 3b. Presumably, the lower frequency for is because 6 is also written as six vertical strokes. It also appears that 10 is represented both as as well as one of the other signs. The identification of as 5 means that Mitchiner’s assumption that it might stand for 100 is invalid. considerations suggest that should be the symbol for the number 5. This is seen in Figure 3b which shows that there is large probability that will appear together with symbols for 2, 3, and 4. The frequency of with 1 is 7 and with itself is 10 which do not, therefore, show up in Figure 3b. Presumably, the lower frequency for is because 6 is also written as six vertical strokes. It also appears that 10 is represented both as as well as one of the other signs. The identification of as 5 means that Mitchiner’s assumption that it might stand for 100 is invalid. It is noteworthy that the later Nagari sign for 5 is this with a stylized tail added to it. Also Brāhmī pa is , which looks very close to this sign. Note further that the symbol for 5 in Brāhmī comes from the first syllable of panca. The fact that the same symbol was used by the Harappans indicates that their word for 5 started with pa as well. This is further evidence against the theory of Dravidian origin of the Indus language since 5 in Tamil is aindu, in Telugu aidu. It reinforces our identification of the Indus language as being Indo-Aryan. Conclusions. The frequency analysis of the most common Brāhmī and Indus signs confirms the hypothesis that the two scripts are related. The case-ending evidence suggests that the language of the inscriptions is Indo-Aryan. The inference that the language is Indo- Aryan is strengthened by the observation that the words that follow the formulae “ “ , which Hunter has argued should be proper names, indeed read as plausible Indo-Aryan names at several places. But an analysis of the case-endings alone has its limitations. It cannot, by itself, establish conclusively that the language is Indo-Aryan. That will have to await a full decipherment of the Indus texts. In any event, the demonstration that Brāhmī is derived from Indus, and the indubitable relationship between Brāhmī and the Phoenician script indicates that the theories of the rise of early writing systems require a complete revision." After Table 2. Frequencies of various sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet (Source : Whitney [9]). Sources: Subhash Kak, 1988, A FREQUENCY ANALYSIS OF THE INDUS SCRIPT • July 1988 • Cryptologia 12(3):129-143 Mirrored at Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233116026 Two related papers of Subhash Kak are: Subhash C. Kak, “INDUS – AND – BRAHMI – FURTHER – CONNECTIONS” Cryptologia 14, no. 2 (1990): 169. Subhash C. Kak, “AN – INDUS-SARASVATI SIGNBOARD,” Cryptologia 20, no. 3 (1996): 275. Kharosthi The Kharosthi, or Kharoṣṭhī, script was invented sometime during the 3rd century BCE and was possibly derived from the Aramaic script. It was used in Gandhara, an ancient kingdom in what is now the northwest of Pakistan, and the Jalalabad district of Afghanistan. Kharosthi texts have also been found along the Silk Road in Bactria, Kushan, Sogdia, and in parts of China. By the 4th century AD the script was no longer used in Gandhara, but may have been used until the 7th centuries in places such as Khotan / Hotan (和田), in what is now Xinjiang in the northeast of China. Unlike the Brāhmī script, which was invented at around the same time and spawned many of the modern scripts of India and South East Asia, Kharosthi had no descendants. Kharoshti was deciphered during the 19th century by James Prinsep, Christian Lassen, C.L. Grotefend and Edwin Norris. Bilingual inscriptions in Gandhari and Greek on coins helped with the decipherment. Since then further material has been found and the script is now better understood. Notable features • Type of writing system: syllabic alphabet or abugida - each letter has an inherent vowel /a/. Other vowels are indicated using diacritics. • Direction of writing: right to left in horizontal lines. Kharoṣṭhī a syllabic writing system used to write Gandhari, of Gāndhārī, a Prakrit language used in inscriptions in the Kharoṣṭhī script between the 3rd century BCE and the 4th century CE, and possibly until the 7th century CE. Sanskrit (संस्कृतम्), a classical language of India, which is still used as a religious and ceremonial language, and as a spoken language to some extent. Pali (पालि), the classical language of Theravada Buddhism that was first used in Sri Lanka during the 1st century BCE. I tried to see if the following ten consonants identified by Subhash Kak had cognates in Kharoṣṭhī t, r, v, n, m, y, s, d, p, k The 'signs' of Kharoṣṭhī for ten consonants are listed below. Ten Kharoṣṭhī consonants for ten frequent consonants of Indo-Aryan languages identified by Subhash Kak: I do NOT find any parallel between Kharoṣṭhī consonant glyphs and Brāhmī. I do NOT find any hieroglyphs of Indus Script which parallel the ten Kharoṣṭhī consonants. I have not attempted to compare the consonants of Kharoṣṭhī with Aramaic or other scripts of the Ancient Near East. ta ra va na ma ya śa da pa ka 10 ba ṣa za I have no comments to offer on the underlying assumption of Subhash Kak that the writing system is a syllabic system comparable to Brāhmī. My conjecture is that kharoṣṭhī writing system was necessitated by the imperative of syllabic representation of syllables in names of people and in writing down words related to philosophical topics such as Samghāta Sutra which is a compilation cognate with the words: samgraha, samgaha ‘catalogue’. This conjecture may explain the reality of early cast coins which bore both Indus Script hieroglyphs and also kharoṣṭhī and Brāhmī syllables to signify ‘names’. Based on clusteranalyses of 'signs' and 'pictorial motifs', the writing system is seen to be logo-graphic and each hieroglyph component is read as a word in Meluhha to compile catalogues of metalwork accounting ledgers. Meluhha of Bhāratīya sprachbund (speech union) links Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Munda streams of speech forms to signify the Harosheth (smithy) cognate Kharoṣṭhī which has been explained as an expression to signify: 'blacksmith speech'. See: Harosheth Hagoyim: Lady on the chariot lynchpin is Meluhha, Indus Script hypertext kharoṣṭhī goya, 'blacksmith speech community' https://tinyurl.com/yc3zndc6

Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, 2000

Scripts have their own distinct function. Several authors have mentioned that the early development of all Indian scripts were either from Brāhmī or Kharoṣṭhī. The Brāhmī script was developed under Semitic influence around 7th c. BC and was originally written from left to right. Whereas the Kharoṣṭhī script whose direction of writing is in Aramaic, from right to left, came into being under Persian rule during the 5th c. BC in northwest of India. In the later centuries, Brāhmī gave rise to eight varieties of scripts from early Mauryas to Gupta ruling period which were employed for writing during 4th c. BC to the 6th c. AD. We know that the ancientness of the Indian language is being proved from its soil which says about two types of language form, i.e. spoken and written. The spoken form of language is expressed in two ways. One preserved through folk forms and the other preserved through cave and rock paintings. The songs sung at the time of birth, death and work conditions are preserved; stories were painted through cave paintings which represent the creativity of literature. The inhabitant of this land stated to drawn this language at about forty thousand years back in Upper Palaeolithic Period. There is a need to evaluate the new trend towards assigning a later date of origin for the Indian scripts in the light of broader historical and cultural prospective. After the discovery of extensive urban civilization in Indus Valley, some scholars indicate that the Indian Script is established around 2500 BC. Recent analyses of the signs available in the inscriptions have led several scholars to view that the language is not belong to Indo-European family, nor it is close to the Sumerians, Hurrians, or Elamite, nor it can be related to the structure of the Munda languages of modern India. Most probably it is a developed from Rock Art which found in various part of India. This paper critically reviews the historical and contemporary ideologies on the origin and development of Indian scripts and establishes that the Indian scripts are mostly and clearly related to the cave arts as existed in our primitive to modern Indian architecture. So it implies that the Cave arts are the forerunners of Indian Scripts.

Scripts have their own distinct function. Several authors have mentioned that the early development of all Indian scripts were either from Brāhmī or Kharoṣṭhī. The Brāhmī script was developed under Semitic influence around 7th c. BC and was originally written from left to right. Whereas the Kharoṣṭhī script whose direction of writing is in Aramaic, from right to left, came into being under Persian rule during the 5th c. BC in northwest of India. In the later centuries, Brāhmī gave rise to eight varieties of scripts from early Mauryas to Gupta ruling period which were employed for writing during 4th c. BC to the 6th c. AD. We know that the ancientness of the Indian language is being proved from its soil which says about two types of language form, i.e. spoken and written. The spoken form of language is expressed in two ways. One preserved through folk forms and the other preserved through cave and rock paintings. The songs sung at the time of birth, death and work conditions are preserved; stories were painted through cave paintings which represent the creativity of literature. The inhabitant of this land stated to drawn this language at about forty thousand years back in Upper Palaeolithic Period. There is a need to evaluate the new trend towards assigning a later date of origin for the Indian scripts in the light of broader historical and cultural prospective. After the discovery of extensive urban civilization in Indus Valley, some scholars indicate that the Indian Script is established around 2500 BC. Recent analyses of the signs available in the inscriptions have led several scholars to view that the language is not belong to Indo-European family, nor it is close to the Sumerians, Hurrians, or Elamite, nor it can be related to the structure of the Munda languages of modern India. Most probably it is a developed from Rock Art which found in various part of India. This paper critically reviews the historical and contemporary ideologies on the origin and development of Indian scripts and establishes that the Indian scripts are mostly and clearly related to the cave arts as existed in our primitive to modern Indian architecture. So it implies that the Cave arts are the forerunners of Indian Scripts. Keywords: Indian Scripts, Brāhmī, Kharoṣṭhī, Indus Valley Scripts, Cave Arts, Odisha Rock Art Scripts, Indian Architecture.