FIRST SCRIPT IN INDIA

 

The Brahmi script is a writing system of ancient South Asia which became fully developed by the 3^rd century BC. Today it is used across South and Southeast Asia. The best known Brahmi inscriptions are the Ashokan pillar edicts. James Prinsep deciphered the Brahmi script. Very difficult to say whether Brahmi developed from a Semitic script or the local Indus valley script. This is currently prevalent all over India including the South in different forms.

Majority of the scholars believe that Brahmi probably came from or influenced by a Semitic script. However, it has evolved independently thereafter in India which is the reason why there are big differences with the scripts it is supposed to have evolved from.

Whatever may be the origin of the Brahmi script, till it arrived, the Vedas were transmitted from generation to generation only through memory and not by any written word.

The Rigveda started forming in the 15^th century BC and at that time there was no written script in India and the Vedas had to be handed through the generations merely by by-hearting them and passing them down the ages through disciples.

For this very reason the 6 Vedangas 1. Shiksha, 2. Chandas, 3. Vyakarana, 4. Nirukta, 5. Kalpa & 6. Jyotisha came into being, laying down among other things strict rules for intonation and metre so that by pronouncing in a different manner, the original meaning of the Vedas may not be lost while handing them down from generation to generation.

All the Indian scripts are the descendants of the Brahmi script and as already mentioned earlier, Brahmi script was first found in the inscriptions of Ashoka. The inscriptions were sculpted in the language of Prakrit, while those in the North West are in Aramaic and Greek. In the North West Kharosti script was used instead of Brahmi. James Princep deciphered the Brahmi script in 1838. Later Kharosti too was deciphered by him.

Some Brahmi inscriptions were found in Tamilnadu & Sri Lanka dating to 6^th century BC. It is therefore quite probable that the Brahmi script being used in India at that time might have travelled from the bottom to the top of India unlike the earlier assumption of from top to bottom.