Component- (A) – Personal details:

Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati.

Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati . & Dr. K. Muniratnam Director i/c, Epigraphy, ASI, Mysore.

Dr. Rajat Sanyal Dept. of Archaeology, University of Calcutta.

Prof. P. Bhaskar Reddy Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati.

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Component-I (B) – Description of module:

Subject Name Indian Culture

Paper Name Indian Epigraphy

Module Name/Title Evolution of North Indian Scripts from Brahmi

Module Id IC / IEP / 12

Notion of early writing in India; The nature of early scripts; Pre requisites Reasons behind evolution of scripts

Development from Early to Middle Brahmi; Regionalization and other Developments in Late Brahmi; Objectives Characteristics of Late Brahmi; Genesis of Proto-Regional ; Siddhamatrka and its chronological varieties

Early Brahmi; Regionalization; Middle Brahmi; Late Keywords Brahmi; Proto-Regional scripts; Siddhamatrka; Nagari; Gaudi

E-text (Quadrant-I) :

1. Introduction

According to D.C Sircar, the and the language are the two salient features of Maurya inscriptions found outside the uttarapatha division of ancient Bharatavarsa (Kumaridvipa). The Brahmi script is read from left to right. According to earlty Indian literary traditions, Brahma, the brahmanical god of creation, is usually believed to be the creator of the speech and, thus, the script also.

Scholars are of different opinions regarding the origin of Brahmi. According to some scholars, Brahmi is an indigenous script that developed in India. Others believe that it is an Indian modification of a foreign system of writing exactly like , the exact path which is still difficult to trace. Sircar suggests that the development of the Brahmi script can be assumed to be the result of an attempt to write the Middle Indo-Aryan languages in the alien script of the prehistoric peoples of India. The opinion of some scholars that Brahmi, like Kharosthi, was also originally written from right to left is, however, not justified.

Before the coming of the British in India i.. prior to eighteenth century, Brahmi script was not deciphered by the Indians in spite of some early attempts in the medieval period. European scholars, on the basis of their knowledge on late medieval writing, first succeeded in deciphering the Brahmi script of still earlier inscriptions. Following this, they succeeded in reading some Late Brahmi epigraphs of the late historical period; but the version of the script used in writing Asokan edicts still remained undeciphered. Scholars such as Stevenson, Lassen and Prinsep could determine some aksaras of Early Brahmi. Many of the Indo-Greek coins bearing biscriptual legend in Greek and Brami/Kharosthi were of great help in the early attempts of deciphering Early Brahmi. It was James Prinsep, who identified some inscriptions from Sanchi as votive documents bearing the record of an object to be ‘the gift of somebody’. Thus, the aksaras ..sa danam ( …sya danam) were read by him and ultimately he succeeded in deciphering Asokan Brahmi.

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Brahmi gave birth not only to the Indian , but also of the scripts of most of the other countries that originated under the influence of Indian civilization. All the alphabets of Ceylon, , Indochina and have their root in the Indian Brahmi script.

In earlier times, the knowledge of writing was passed on from teacher to pupil. There were initially no fixed model of individual letters, neither people had the eagerness to write quickly which would help in the gradual modification in the Brahmi letters. The development of different shapes of particular letters in different regions was often due to the scribes commencing to write a letter not from the same point i.e. from the top or the left or the right. A letter was first modified at the beginning points and left it after completion. Such factors were responsible for the rise of regional variations in the alphabets of India. The same process was followed in the development of many of the alphabets found various parts of South-East Asia, where the Brahmi script was introduced earlier.

2. The Earliest version of Brahmi

Notwithstanding the debates about the exact area or time period of the origin of the Brahmi script, what is unanimously accepted is that the Brahmi remained the only major of India from the third century BCE till date and it gave birth to all the modern South and Southeast Asian scripts. The evolution of different scripts from the earliest version of Brahmi followed a multilinear line of progress. But in order of understanding the varying lines of evolution of the Brahmi script from the earliest ties to the later centuries of the early medieval period, a fair and comprehensive understanding of the earliest version of the script is mandatory.

As just suggested, we do not precisely know the exact root of the script that we now call Brahmi. The script is first encountered in the inscriptions of the Maurya king Asoka, dated in the second half of the third century BCE. However, it is difficult to believe that the script suddenly originated around the third century BCE and spread instantly throughout the Indian subcontinent in the uniform, ‘monumental’ and normalized version that we see in the Asokan edicts. It must have had an antecedent stage of development that we have not so far been able to precisely underline due to paucity of primary source material. Naturally, the origin of the script has remained a major controversy in the realm of Indian epigraphic studies. While there are fair indications of some systemic similarities of the script with the protohistoric writing system found on numerous Harappan sealings, considerable empirical evidence has been used by generations of scholarships to advocate for an extraneous––particularly Aramaic––origin of the script. Two terms used in the early inscriptional literature referring to the material for writing inscriptions are silathambha or stone pillars and silaphalaka or stone slabs.

The debate over terminology in the realm of Indian palaeography is quite long-drawn. However, it was D.C. Sircar who rightly argued that the earliest version of the Brahmi script should be called the Early Brahmi, replacing the earlier terminologies like Asokan Brahmi or Maurya Brahmi, for the simple reason that this earliest version continued for more than two centuries (even well after the fall of the Mauryas) and the use of it was not the sole credit of either Asoka or his successors. As far as the style of writing in Brahmi is concerned, we know that the inscriptions in this script were written, with the only exception of the famous Sohgaura copperplate, on stone. A.H. Dani rightly calls it the ‘ink style’, for some of the aksaras in the script clearly exhibit the use of a terminal at the bottom, for e.g. on , and da. Further, the script is in general characterized by a ‘free movement of the hand resulting in round forms’. Again, the script found in the inscriptions of Asoka shows no trace of any cursive style of writing, leaving a select few exceptions. Finally, the script as it appears in Asokan edicts is a uniform, monumental and normalized system that hardly witnessed any influence of regional style. This was of course resulted from the centralized

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nature of the Mauryan state, consolidated under Asoka, with every aspect of culture, including the practice of writing, had an element of control over it.

As far as the structure of the script is concerned, the Early Brahmi script is composed of six initial or full , thirty-three and a specific range of consonantal conjuncts and ligatures. Dani traces an almost uniform set of formulae, with occasional and peculiar deviations, driving the formation of the ligatures. He finds altogether ten different ‘second’ or subjoined elements to govern the formation of composite symbols of ligatures.

3. Evolution from the Early to the Late Brahmi

The essentially inherent ‘unity of purpose’ that governed the pattern of writing in Early Brahmi of Asokan edits was lost immediately after the disintegration of the Mauryan Empire. This gradually resulted, inter alia, a change in the style of writing. Thus, the factors that came to characterize the Middle Brahmi script between the second and the late first century BCE are:

. Decline of the Maurya polity

. Gradual appearance of Sanskrit as epigraphic language

. Growth of provincial political cultures

. Variation in content and purpose and

. New developments in Greek palaeography

These factors finally gave birth, in the late first century BCE, to the formation of the following features in Brahmi of the subcontinent in general:

. Formation of the Square akṣara.

. An extensive tendency angularity in writing individual letters and

. Appearance of new due to the introduction of the Sanskrit language.

. Introduction of New symbols, resulting from the previous issue.

. Introduction of head-marks due to the currency of the pen style.

. Development of regional styles

. Introduction of varying medial vowels because of the development of regional styles.

The introduction of the ‘pen style’ in Brahmi around the first century BCE marked the most fundamental and significant change in the in India. The variation of content and purpose and the freedom of the use of the cursive hand, between the first and the fourth century CE, resulted in the formation of a wide range of regional styles of waht we now conceive as the Late Brahmi script. The major factors that influenced the formation characterized the structure of this script are:

. Appearance of more newer symbols

. Gradually enhancing fondness of the composers for exhibition of flourish

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. The gradual diversity in the use of material starting from stone to metal and terracotta

. Development of the cursive style

. Further regionalization in the formation of head-marks.

4. Rise of Proto-Regional Scripts

The Late Brahmi script with its characteristics like extensive regionalization, development of cursive style, gradual development of flourishes mostly on the top of the letters, the emergence of different types of head-marks and, most importantly, the consolidation of Epigraphical Hybrid Sanskrit, a language that came to be used exclusively in writing inscriptions, slowly gave birth to a large number of what we now conceive as ‘Proto-Regional Scripts’.

Figure 1: Regional styles of writing in Middle Brahmi, according to A.H. Dani.

Figure 2: Regional styles of writing in Late Brahmi, according to A.H. Dani

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4.1. Siddhamatrka

The following observation of D.C. Sircar, on the term Siddhamtrka, is very important to note:

‘In North India, the regional alphabets developed from Brahmi of the late stage through a distinct step. The of this intermediate stage may be styled Siddhamatrka. Scholars have given various names to this alphabet: two of them, often used, being ‘Kutila’ and ‘Early Nagari’. But the name Siddhamatrka is more authoritative since Al-Biruni (eleventh century CE) uses this name for the alphabets of certain regions, and the Chinese applied the name siddham to the same script.’ Thus the script that J.F. Fleet termed ‘kuṭila’ since the right vertical element of the letters become, in this style of writing, bent (i.e. kutila) outwards to further right’ and Bühler termed, on almost the same ground, ‘acute-angled’ or ‘early Nāgari’, came to be permanently recognized as Siddhamatrka.

The script found in North Indian inscriptions of the period between the sixth and the tenth century CE may be regarded as Siddhamatrka, especially in the wide areas where Nagari and Gaudi developed out of it, though at different points of time in the early medieval period. In the northwestern region, the Siddhamatrka script lasted for a comparatively shorter span to give birth to the Early Kasmiri (or Sarada) about the eighth century CE. Almost about the same time, Early Telegu-Kannada was ousted from Western India by Siddhamatrka.

Siddhamatrka was regularly used in the epigraphic literature of northern and western Deccan and sometimes also in the Southern Deccan and the Far South, e.g. in the Pattadakal (Bijapur District, Mysore) pillar inscription of Chalukya Vikramaditya II (733-45 CE) and the Saluvankuppam (Chingleput District, Tamil Nadu) Atiranacandesvara cave inscription ascribed to the Pallava king Nandivarman II Pallavamalla (c. 731-96 CE) and the numerous Pallava inscriptions in Kanchi. A highly calligraphic version of Siddhamatrka was not only prevalent in parts of eastern India, the most extensive example being the site of Mundesvari in north , but also in far south as at many of the sites mentioned above. This script, according to D.C. Sircar, gave birth also to Southern Nagari about the tenth century CE. The East Indian variety of Siddhamatrka script is designated by some scholars as Eastern Nagari. A closer examination of the forms in Siddhamatrka would reveal that though this is used almost as a blanket term for all the scripts of northern India from the seventh to the ninth century CE, the script probably had two evolutionary stages of development. In the early phase covering the sixth-seventh century CE, while a later more evolved phase spanning from the eight/ninth to the tenth century CE. We may therefore call these two distinct stages and ‘Early Siddhamatrka’ and ‘Mature Siddhamatrka’. More sustained and thorough research in the systemic of the Siddhamatrka script of northern and eastern India is expected to throw more light on the nature of development of proto-Regional scripts in general and that of eastern India in particular.

Outside the present geographical orbit of India, the Siddhamatrika script was introduced in Tibet In the seventh century CE. The modern is the same script is a modified and adjusted version of Siddhamtrka of early inscriptions frond from this region. Buddhist Dharanis were written in the Siddhamatrika script in East Asia till quite recent times.

5. Development of the Northern Scripts

In Kashmir and its neighbourhood, the Sarada script developed out of Siddhamatrka around the eighth century CE. In writing the Kasmiri language, however, the Nagari script gradually overpowered Sarada in the late medieval period. The Gurumukhi script used by the Sikhs, on the other hand, is a late modification of Sarada for writing the Punjabi language, while the Lahnda is an allied cursive writing style used by the scribes, accountants and shop keepers of that area. The Perso- superseded the regional styles of the Sind region and

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the northwest in the medieval period. It also came to be widely used in the Punjab-Haryana sectors of northern India.

In Uttar and major parts of central India, Siddhamatrka gradually evolved into what is usually called Eastern Nagari, while Western Nagari developed out of it in Rajasthan, Gujrat and Maharashtra, from around the tenth century CE in both cases. In Eastern India, siddhamatrka gave to Gaudi about the late tenth century. This script is one of the three ‘eastern Indian’ scripts mentioned by Al-Biruni, the other two being Siddhamatrka and Bhaiksuki. Of these, the Bhaiksui is precisely said to be the ‘script of the Buddhists. From Gaudi ultimately sprang the regional scripts of Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Odisha and . The local scripts of Nepal were ousted by Nagari in the late medieval period. The widely used Maithili script of north Bihar, which was primarily used also in some other parts of Bihar, is still a current usage in the Mithila region. Maithilis have however now adopted the Nagari script in general and as a result Hindi has ousted the Maithili language from North Bihar.

One of the chief points of distinction between Siddhamatrka and its later derivatives is that the matra is short and wedge-shaped in the former so that letters like , , , , sa and have an upper opening, while in the latter, the matra is more or less horizontal and long enough to cover up the opening.

5.1. Nagari and its variants

The Hindi language, along with its various dialects and associated speeches such as Rajasthani, Malavi, Chatisgadhi, Avadhi, Bhojpuri, Maithili and even Marathi, is now written in the Nagari script. Nagari used in Varanasi region of Uttar Pradesh, which Sircar prefers to call ‘Eastern Nagari’, is slightly different from ‘Western Nagari’ used in Jain manuscripts copied in the Rajasthan- area and from the script called Balabodha which was adopted in writing Marathi. The Jain communities have published a few books in western Nagari often called ‘Jain Nagari’ in which , , , ja, , tha, da, , etc, are different from the eastern Nagari forms of the letters.

The Nagari script has been further subdivided into two chronological varieties by D.C Sircar, called Early and Modern Nagari, the former being used in inscriptional records ranging from the tenth to the fourteenth century CE, while the latter in those of the period from the fourteenth century CE onwards. One of the ‘test letters’ distinguishing Early from Modern Nagari is ja which, again according to Sircar, is of the ‘Bengali type’ in the former. Medial e sign, which is a head-mark in modern Nagari, was usually a ‘prstha-matra’ in Early Nagari. One of the curious palaeographic features of Nagari writing is that the ligature rva can be easily confused with the kha especially when no matra is used. The same is the case with sva. The is a slightly cursive and modified version of Western Nagari. A similar cursive and popular variety of Eastern Nagari used by scribes, accountants and shop-keepers is called Kayethi. It has some variations, however, in accordance with regional demands. The Modi alphabet prevalent in parts of Maharashtra is an exceptionally cursive. A Bengali modification of the Kayethi script is known as the ‘Sylhet Nagari’ which is used by the Islamic populations of Sylhet in .

As a derivative of Siddhamatrka used in parts of the Deccan and also in the Far South, Nagari was sometimes written in the epigraphic and numismatic records of some of the royal lineages that ruled the concerned regions during the medieval period. This South Indian version of the Nagari script slowly gave birth to what is called Nandi-Nagari. The Patnulkarans or Saurastra Brahmanas of Tamil Nadu, who are Gujarati weavers settled in the South, not only speak a dialect of Gujarati script, but is also, quite expectedly, influenced by the . The Saurastra script uses short and long forms of some of the full vowels in the fashion of South Indian scripts.

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5.2. Gaudi

Gaudi, is the East Indian derivative of the Siddhamatrka alphabet and was widely in use in composing inscriptions in Bengal, Bihar, Nepal, Assam and Odisha between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries CE. Buhler and his followers wrongly called it ‘Proto-Bengali’. But the name Gaudi was used by Abu-Raihan-Al-Biruni, as already observed, in the eleventh century CE to designate the script of Eastern India, and it is reasonably a more sensible name since the use of the script in question had probably gained currency from Bengal.

The structure of this script is driven by the use of solid horizontal matra, the continuity of the acute angle formed with the base, though the vertical element of the aksaras here are properly vertical. The hook like sign at the top of the letters, developed out of the hollow- triangle type of the matra of Siddhamatrka, is sometimes designated as the ‘Nepelese hook’, though it is also found in other regions using Gaudi as the chief epigraphic script.

6. Summary

In summing up the discussion, we may focus on the flowing points:

1. All the modern Indian scripts developed from Brahmi.

2. Brahmi had a continuous evolutionary development from the 3rd century BCE till date.

3. Early Brahmi developed into Middle and Late Brahmi.

4. Several new features and extensive regionalization characterized later forms of Brahmi.

5. All the Proto-Regional scripts of the Indian subcontinent developed from Late Brahmi.

6. Siddhamatrka developed from Late Brahmi around late sixth/ early seventh century CE.

7. The name Siddhamatrka is known from the travel account of the Arab traveler Abu- Raihan-Al-Biruni’ who came to India in the first half of the eleventh century CE.

8. Siddhamatrka developed into Gaudi in eastern India and into Nagari in northern India.

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