Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 330

INDIAN BRANCH
329
(1) The existence in the same country of two or more successive scripts does not prove that one depends on the other; for instance, the early Greek alphabet employed in Crete did not descend from the early Cretan or Minoan scripts.
(2) Even if similarities could be proved between the shapes of the Indus Valley characters and those of the Brahmi letters, evidence would still be lacking that the latter descended directly from the former, unless the likeness of the signs belonging to the two systems corresponds with the identity of their phonetic values. In this connection, the Minoan script as well as the Cypriote syllabary contained many signs resembling early Greek letters, but one was not derived from the other.
(3) I have already made clear (p. 216), that the main importance in the origin of an alphabet is not the invention of signs, but the establishment of an alphabetic system of writing; this applies for instance (p. 189f.) to the origin of the Meroitic scripts. The Indus Valley writing was presumably a transitional system or a mixed syllabic-ideographic script, whilst the Brahmi script was a semi-alphabet. As far as we know, no syllabic-ideographic script became alphabetic without the influence of another alphabetic script, and this was more important historically than the material origin of the single signs. No serious scholar has ever tried to show how the Indus Valley ideographic script could have developed into the Brahmi semi-alphabetic writing.
(4) The extensive Vedic literature gives no indication whatever of the existence of writing in early Aryan India. As Professor Rhys Davids rightly pointed out, it is one of those rare cases when negative evidence, where some mention would be reasonably expected, is good evidence. Many passages show that recording by writing was not practised while there is pretty constant reference to the texts as existing, but "existing only in the memory of those who learnt them by heart." For instance, the Indian priests were exceedingly keen to keep the knowledge of the mantras, the charms or verses, on which the magic of the sacrifice depended, in their own hands. "The ears of a Sudra who listens, intentionally, when the Veda is being recited are to be filled with molten lead. His tongue is to be cut out if he recite it. His body is to be split in twain if he preserve it in his memory." The priestly view was that God himself had bestowed the exclusive right of teaching upon the hereditary priests, who each claimed to be great divinities. Writing is never mentioned. Among the ancient Indian divinities there was no god of "writing," but there was Sarasvati, the goddess of knowledge, learning and eloquence.
(5) Only the Buddhist literature gives clear references to writing in ancient times. A Buddhist tract of the Suttantas (or the conversational discourses of the Buddha) called Sila-sutta, attributed to the middle of the fifth century B.C., mentions a game for children-akkharika ("lettering"). In the Buddhist canonical scriptures lekha ("writing") is praised (Vinaya,