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 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 Script; 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 Brahmi script and the Prakrit 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 Kharosthi, 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.e. 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 (Sanskrit …sya danam) were read by him and ultimately he succeeded in deciphering Asokan Brahmi. 2 Brahmi gave birth not only to the Indian alphabets, but also of the scripts of most of the other countries that originated under the influence of Indian civilization. All the alphabets of Ceylon, Tibet, Indochina and Indonesia 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 writing system 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 dot at the bottom, for e.g. on kha, ja 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 3 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 vowels, thirty-three consonants 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 phoneme 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 history of writing 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 4 . The gradual diversity in the use of material starting from stone to metal and terracotta .