Kharosti and Brahmi.

• Author: Scharfe, Hartmut
• Position: Early scripts of India

THE EMERGENCE OF WRITING (1) IN INDIA and the relation between the two early scripts, Brahmi and Kharosti, have received new attention in the last several years. (2) A consensus has emerged that challenges Georg Buhler's theories that had widely been accepted in Western scholarship for a century: that the Brahmi script was derived for commercial use in the eighth century B.C. from an Aramaic alphabet, and that later, during the Achaemenid domination of Northwestern India, a more modern Aramaic script was introduced into that part of India and subsequently modified under the influence of the Brahmi script. (3) Several Indian scholars (and some early European scholars) considered the Brahmi script an indigenous development, and some tried to derive it from the undeciphered script found on the seals of the Indus Valley Civilization that flourished before 2000 B.C. (4)

One of the problems with Buhler's theory is the oddity that the Brahmi which is better equipped to write an Indian language, would have been replaced by the less apt Kharosti (which would see some secondary modifications under the influence of the Brahmi). Buhler refers to the introduction of the Arabic script after the Muslim conquest, but the parallel is not close: the massive influx of Afghans and Turks and the introduction of Islam and Quran study into India cannot be compared with the few Aramaic scribes who would have served the Persian overlords in the provinces of Gandhara and Sindhu. In fact no Aramaic documents of any kind have surfaced from the period of Achaemenid domination in India. Raj Bali Pandey (5) concluded from this lack of Aramaic documents that Kharosti could not be derived from Aramaic, and that perhaps "the Persians did not rule over India directly." But while no Aramaic inscriptions or other texts are known from the whole eastern half of the Achaemenid empire, the Aramaic inscriptions of Asoka, almost a century later, found in Eastern Afghanistan prove the importance of the Aramaic language and script in that border area.

The distinctive features of both scripts are well known. The Kharosti is more cursive, the Brahmi more monumental. While the Kharosti is written from the right to left, does not differentiate between long and short vowels, and indicates initial vowels with similar signs, the Brahmi is written from left to right, distinguishes between long and short vowels, and uses distinctive letters for the initial vowels. Neither direction of writing offers distinct advantages--it is like driving either on the right side or the left side of the road. The other two features are now seen as improvements of the Brahmi over the Kharosti, but all is not well with the arguments offered.

The Kharosti script used in the inscriptions of Asoka, the Sakas, and Kusanas does not differentiate between short and long vowels. Buhler, who considered the...