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THE INDIAN SCRIPTS
BHARATI SHELAT*
The Palaeography of a country is one of the most fascinating and instructive studies. It deals with the art of writing, The art of writing was one of the momentous inventions which has shaped the destiny of man and it proved the most stable medium of the propagation of knowledge and the diffusion of human culture.
The art of writing was considered as one of the pioneering subjects of education in ancient India. The word 'Lipi' was used for the art of writing and Lipiśālā for the primary school. The earliest mention of the word for script (Lipi or Libi) is found in Pāņini's Astādhyāyī (c. 800 B.C.) (2.21). Kautilya's Arthaśāstra refers to script (Lipi) as one of the subjects to be taught to a child prince. In 1.5.2 he writes quathaf fart Heri 144 ia. The inscriptions of Ashok contain the words Lipi, Libi, and Dipi all meaning script. At least two types of scripts Brāhmi and Kharosthi were prevalent in the time of Mauryan king Asoka, but their names are nowhere mentioned in his edicts. In the Jain Sūtras the Pannavanā and Samavāyānga (cha. XVIII) and the Bhagavatīsūtra (cha. V) the names of various scripts are mentioned. The first two contain a list of eighteen scripts and the last one refers to only one Brahmi script (नमो बंभीये लिबिये ।)
The Buddhist work ‘Lalitavistara' (c. 300 B.C.) has preserved a much bigger List that contained in the Jain Sūtras. It enumerates 64 scripts which are said to have existed in the time of Budhha (cha. X. 125. 19). The most current writing in India was Brāhmi, which was an alphabetic system of script.2 The writing confined to the north-west part of India was Kharosthi which used the name alphabets as the Brāhmi, but its characters were different.3
*
Former Director, B. J. Institute of Learning and Research, Ahmedabad.
