English
language was, we know from the edicts of Asoka; for the spoken tongue could not have changed very much from 477 B. C., when Gautama died, to 260 B. C., when Asoka reigned. The spoken language then of the third or Rationalistic Period was an early form of Pali, by whatever names (Magadhi, &c.) antiquarians may choose to call it. And varieties of this language con- - * Dr. Rajendra Lala Mitra supposes the corrupt Sanscrit of the Buddhist Gathas to be intermediate in point of time between pure Sanscrit and the Pali. It is probable however that this corrupt form of Sanscrit . Was used at the sanse time when Pali became a spoken tongue. 28 BUDDHIST PERIOD. [BOOK IV. tinued to be the spoken tongue of Northern India during the fourth or Buddhist Period. In the fifth or Pauranik Period the Pali had been considerably altered and formed into the different Prakrit dialects which we find in the dramas of this period. The grammatical forms of the Prakrit depart more widely from the Sanscrit than those of the Pali, and his- torically too, we know that the spoken language of Kali- dasa’s heroines was later than the spoken tongue of Asoka. Before the Pauranik Period closed, another change had taken place ; and the Prakrits had been further modified into the Hindi, in Northern India by tooo A. D. It will thus be seen that the spoken tongue of Northern India has undergone considerable changes within the last four thousand years. In the Vedic Period it was the Sanscrit of the Rig Veda ; in the Epic Period it was the Sanscrit of the Bridhmanas; * in the Ration- alistic and Buddhist Periods it was Pali; in the Pauranik Period it was the Prakrits; and since the rise of the Rajputs in the roth century it has been the Hindi-+ * Lassen, Benfey, Muir, and other scholars have proved that the old Sanscrit was once a spoken tongue, This self-evident proposition has sometimes been questioned on very insufficient grounds. + M. Senart states that the Vedic Sanscrit was down to the 3rd cen- tury B. C. the subject of some degree of culture ; that classic or modern Sanserit was formed between the 3rd century B. C. and 1st century A. D.3 that the mixt Sanserit of the GAth’s was only a manner of writing the Prakrits ; and the Prakrits were popular in their origin and were fixed in thew later literary form between the 2nd and 4th centuries A, D. CHAP, IL] LANGUAGE AND ALPHABET. 29 From the subject of the spoken language of India we turn to the subject of alphabet on which much ‘has been written and many wild conjectures have been indulged in. ‘The Devanagari character, in which Sanscrit is now written, is of comparatively recent origin. The oldest Indian character known is that in which Asoka’s inscriptions were recorded in the third century before Christ. It is necessary to mention that these inscrip- tions are recorded in twodistinct characters—one reading from right to left, like the modern Arabic and Persian, and the other reading from left to right, like the modern Devanagari and the European characters, The former is confined to the Kapur da Giri inscription and to the coins of the Greek and Scythian princes of Ariana ; and it has been called the Ariano-Pé# character. The latter is the common character of all other texts of Asoka’s inscriptions, and has been called the Indo. Péit character. The Ariano-Pali character is not one of Indian origin, and was never used in India except in the ex- treme western frontier. Mr. Thomas rightly concludes that it has no claim to an indigenous origin in India, based, as it manifestly is, upon an alphabet cognate with the Phoenician. On the other hand the Indo-Pali character was not only universally used in India, but can claim to be of indigenous Indian origin. As we have stated before, it 30 BUDDHIST PERIOD. [BOOK Iv. reads from left to right, and it is formed exclusively of straight lines or portions of circles. Mr. Thomas has no hesitation in stating that it is an “independently devised and locally matured scheme of writing ;” and he insists pointedly to the Indian origin of the Indo- Pali alphabet. because it pleases many antiquarians still to conjecture that the Hindus borrowed: their alphabet from the Greeks or Pheenicians. General Cunningham maintains with Mr, Thomas the Indian origin of the Indo-Pali character. His, remarks on the subject of the origin of alphabets generally, and of the Indo-P4li alphabet in particular, are so thoughtful that we make no hesitation in making some extracts. | , ; “The first attempts of mankind at graphic represen-. ‘tation must have been ‘confined to pictures or direct: imitations of actual objects. This was the case with the. Mexican paintings, which depicted only such material objects as could be seen by the eye. An improvement en direct. pictorial :representation was made by the ancient Egyptians in the substitution of a part for the whole, as of a human head for a man, a bird’s head for a bird, &c. The system was still further extended by giving to certain pictures indirect values or powers symbolical of the objects represented. Thus a jackal was made the type of cunning, and an ape the type of rage, By a still further application of this abbreviated symbolism a pair of human arms with spear and shield CHAP. I1.] LANGUAGE AND ALPHABET. 3r denoted fighting, a pair of human legs meant walking, while a hoe was the type of digging, an eye of seeing, &c. But even with this poetical addition the means of expressing thoughts and ideas by pictorial representa- tions was still very limited.* * It seems certain there- fore that at a very early date the practice of pure picture writing must have been found so complicated ‘and inconvenient that the necessity fora simpler mode of expressing their ideas was forced upon the Egyptian priesthood. The plan which they invented was highly ingenious. e * * * * * * * - “To the greater number of their pictorial symbols, the Egyptians assigned the phonetic values of the particular sounds or:names, of which each symbol previously had been only a simple picture. Thus to a mouth, +7, they assigned the value 7, and to a.hand, tai,the valuez * * * %*€ * * & “A similar process would appear to have taken place in India, as I will presently attempt to shew by a separate examination of the alphabetical letters of Asoka’s age with the pictures of various objects from which I believe them to have been directly descended.* * My own conclusion is that the Indian alphabet is of purely Indian origin, just. as much as the. Egyptian hieroglyphics were the purely local invention of the people of Egypt* * I admit that several of the letters have almost. exactly the same forms as those which are found amongst the Egyptian hiero- 32 BUDDHIST PERIOD. [BOOK Iv. glyphics for the same things, but their values are quite different, as they form different syllables in the two languages. Thus a pair of legs separated as in walking was the Egyptian symbol for walking or motion, and the same form, like the two sides of a pair of compasses, is the Indian letter g, which -asga* is the commonest of all the Sanscrit roots for walking or motion of any kind. But the value of the Egyptian symbol is s; and I contend that if the symbol had been dorrowed by the Indians, it would have retained its original value. This, indeed, is the very thing that happened with the Accadian cuneiform symbols when they were adopted by the Assyrians.’ General Cunningham conjectures that the Indo-PAli letter K% is derived from the Indian hoe or mattock (Khan—to dig) ; that Y is derived from barley ( Yava) or from a member of the human frame; that D is from the tooth (Danta), Dh from the bow (Dhanus), P is from the hand (Pdi), M is from the mouth (Mukha), V is from the lute (Vind), NV is from the nose | (Wasa), R is from a rope (Razz), His from the hand (Hasta), L is from the plough (Langa) or from a member of the human frame, S is from the ear (Svavana), and so on. * The Devandgari g has still a resemblance with its Indo-Pali ancestor. + Cunningham’s Corpus Znscrittionum Indicarum. Vol 1. 1877, Pp. 52 & 53. CHAP. I] LANGUAGE AND ALPHABET. 33 “Tn this brief examination of the letters of the old Indian alphabet, I have compared their forms at the time of Asoka; or 250 B. C., with the pictures of various objects and of the different members of the human frame; and the result of my examination is the convic- tion that many of the characters still preserved, even in their simpler alphabetical forms, very strong and marked traces of their pictorial origin. My comparison of the symbols with the Egyptian hieroglyphics shows that many of them are almost identical representations of the same objects. But as the Indian symbols have totally different values from those of Egypt, it seems almost certain that the Indians must have worked out their system quite independently, although they follow- ed the same process. They did not, therefore, borrow their alphabet from the Egyptians. * * * “ Now, if the Indians did not borrow their alphabet from the Egyptians, it must have been the local inven- tion of the people themselves, for the simple reason that ‘there was no other people from whom they could have . obtained it, Their nearest neighbours were the peoples ” of Ariana and Persia, of whom the former used a Semetic character of Phoenician origin, reading from right to left, and the latter a cuneiform character formed of separate detached strokes, which has nothing whatever in com- mon with the compact forms of the Indian alphabet.”* * Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, Vol. 1, Pp. 60 & 61. R.C, D., A. Lit. : 3 34 BUDDHIST PERIOD. [BOOK IV.