Component-I (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. 1 Component-I (B) – Description of module: Subject Name Indian Culture Paper Name Indian Epigraphy Module Name/Title Brahmi Script : Origin-Decipherment-Features-Theories Module Id IC / IEP / 09 History of epigraphic studies; different scripts of south Pre requisites Asia; earliest writing in India earliest use of Brahmi; name of the script; terminological Objectives issues; antiquity of the script; history of decipherment; origin theories; palaeographic characteristics Early Brahmi, Antiquity, Decipherment, Origin theories, Keywords Characteristics E-text (Quadrant-I) : 1. Introduction Closely connected with the term epigraphy is the study of old scripts or palaeographs in which all the inscriptions are written. Since traditional India was much less oriented towards written records, so was the case of scripts as well, although there are several stereotyped textual lists of ‘sixty-four’ or ‘eighteen’ scripts of which only two early historical systems of writing datable to the third century BCE, viz. Brahmi and Kharosthi––have been so far identified on actual records. Of late, claims have been made to the identification of some other problematic scripts, for e.g. the shell (Sankha) or the mixed (Avimisra) scripts, though many aspects of their palaeographic systemic have so far remained unravelled. Compared to the early systems of writing, names of a number of early mediaeval scripts are known to the epigraphists on the basis of the itinerary of Abu Raihan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Al Biruni, the famous Arab traveller who came to India in the eleventh century CE. Among more prominent names of scripts mentioned by Biruni and identified on epigraphic documents are Siddhamatrka (Nagari, Gaudi and Bhaiksuki, besides such scripts as Sarada of Kashmir and Grantha of far south, known from other internal sources. With the discovery of the Harappa civilization in the first quarter of the twentieth century, the history of writing in the subcontinent was pushed back to the third millennium BCE, although the ‘pictographic- logographic’ script of Harappa is yet to be properly deciphered. 2. Antiquity of Historical writing The issue of antiquity of historical writing in India is a major debate in the realm of Indian epigraphy. One group of scholars is of opining that the structure of the script as we find in the Asokan inscriptions must have an antecedent phase of development. While some scholars trace this antecedent phase to the time of composition of the Vedas, others argue that the script was essentially a result of Mauryan sponsorship under Asoka. Scholars like Richard Salomon believe that if there was an issue of sponsorship under Asoka, its origin 2 might be hidden in an inspiration from the Old Persian Cuneiform, understandably as a result of continued cultural contacts between the South Asian and Persian polities. Some scholars have also put forward some archaeological evidence to argue that the earliest Brahmi had connections with the script of the Harappan inscriptions. B.B. Lal, for instance, 3. History of Decipherment and further Developments Before entering into a detailed discussion on the typological and qualitative nature of Indian inscriptions, it is important to see how the study of inscriptions developed into a subjective discipline in the realm of Indology. It is very significant to note that there is definite evidence that ancient Indians used old inscriptions for historical research, as shown by the famous early mediaeval text called Rajatarangini that that refers to the ‘consultation of old epigraphic records’. But it is even more crucially significant to realize that study of inscription was completely unknown to traditional Indian Sanskritists, so that the field of epigraphy gained currency only with the advent of early European Indology in the late eighteenth century, more particularly with the establishment of the Asiatic Society at Calcutta in 1784. Actually, since the ancient inscriptions written in archaic characters that no more resembled the current scripts by any means, European Orientalists and their Pandits found it really difficult to decode the absolutely obscure letters written on edicts of Asoka, which were later found to be well over two millennia old. It took no less than fifty-three years, since the inception of epigraphic researches by the Asiatic Society, to decipher one of the earliest known historical scripts of India, when James Prinsep (1799-1840), the then Assistant Assay Master of the Calcutta Mint and a close associate of William Jones, made the breakthrough not only by revealing the mystery of the earliest Brahmi letters engraved on the Asokan edicts in 1837, but also by realizing that it is the earliest script of historic India and is the parent of all later Indic scripts and further that ‘the language is…not Sanskrit, but the vernacular modification of it’. Although Prinsep failed to realize that the king frequently referred to in these epigraphs as ‘the Beloved of the Gods’ (devanampiya) was Asoka, this was soon compensated by George Turnour who rightly identified the king with Asoka by virtue of his thorough knowledge of Pali historical texts of Ceylon. The decipherment of early Brahmi was followed immediately by another great achievement––the decipherment of Kharosthi. Both James Prinsep and a comparatively less known scholar named C.L. Grotefend deserve equal credit for revealing the mystery of this unique script written from right to left, as they worked on the identical type of sources (a set of biscriptual Indo-Greek coins inscribed on one side with and the other with Greek letters) and ended up with almost identical results, rightly identifying many of the early Kharosthi letters. The question that immediately appears from the above review is what happened in the intervening period between the establishment of the Asiatic Society and James Prinsep’s decipherments? This issue will lead us to Salomon’s recent apt chronological sequencing of development of epigraphic researches in India into three distinct phases. The earliest and the most influential of these was the ‘Era of Decipherments (1835-1860)’ within which the above goals of decipherments were achieved. This phase was preceded by the ‘Pioneering Era: Early Readings of Inscriptions (1784-1834)’ when epigraphic research was gradually taking a definitive shape in the subcontinent. The earliest publication of an early inscription 3 was the ‘Sanskrit-mad’ Charles Wilkins (1749-1836), one of the most prominent European Indologists who wrote an article titled ‘A Royal Grant of Land, Engraved on a Copper Plate, Bearing Date Twenty-three Years Before Christ; and Discovered Among the Ruins at ‘Mongueer’. Translated from the Original Sanskrit by Charles Wilkins, Esq. in the Year 1781’, in the first volume of Asiatic Researches, the official annual bulletin of the Asiatic Society in 1788, succeeded by a second article in the same volume on ‘An Inscription on a Pillar near Buddal’. Although ‘decidedly archaic’, it is now known that both the inscriptions of Wilkins were actually not as ancient as he thought. In fact both the copperplates, written in Sanskrit language and mature Siddhamatrika of eastern variety datable to c. ninth century CE, belonged to the reigns of Pla kings who ruled in Bihar-Bengal in the early mediaeval period. Subsequent developments within the ‘Pioneering Era’ were greatly led by another scholar named Henry Thomas Colebrooke (1765-1837) who was the first epigraphist to have published complete and reliable facsimiles of Asokan inscriptions found on the pillar of Delhi. Even more significant was his observation that in the absence of reliable literary accounts, the inscriptions should form the most major body of sources for the study of history of the ‘Hindu’ race. With the appointment of Alexander Cunningham as the Surveyor General of the Government Archaeological department in 1861 and the formation of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in 1871, the ‘Period of Maturity (1861-1900)’ in Indian epigraphy began. The most salient feature of this period was the systematization of the publication policy of epigraphic material under the aegis of the ASI and some other founder fathers of Indian antiquarian studied as James Burgess, Cunningham and many of their contemporaries. The three important series of publications that demand mention in this regard are the journal named Indian Antiquary subtitled A Journal of Oriental Research in Archaeology, History, Literature, Languages, Folklore, &c, &c, under the editorship of James Burgess in 1872, a separate series called Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum initiated by Cunningham in 1877, and another bulletin called Epigraphia Indica in1888 under the leadership of Burgess again, besides the journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society that continued to be the predominant vehicles of inscriptional studies. One may note here that the Epigraphia Indica remained the official annual bulletin of epigraphy branch of the ASI till the last quarter of the twentieth century. It is also important to note that this mature period also brought into light the works of some pioneering scholars who, for the first time, concentrated exclusively on the study of early scripts of India, especially Brahmi and Kharosthi. Although the journey of Indian paleographic studies started as early as 1874 with the publication of Elements of South Indian Palaeography by A.C. Burnell, the genre found its proper momentum with the publication of Bharatiya Prachin Lipimala (in Hindi) by G.H. Ojha in 1894, followed by two articles titled ‘On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet’ and ‘The Origin of the Kharoshti Alphabet’ in 1895 by the German palaeographer George Buhler and continued with Buhler’s monograph Indische Palaeographie.