Thread by @Bharathgyan

#Myth: India only had an oral system.Writing came much later.

#Reality: India used both oral and written forms of communication, from very early days, i.e. Puranic days, depending on need.

SCRIPT VS SPOKEN

A language comprises of two distinct facets – the spoken sound and the written script.

The spoken sounds of a language can be written using different scripts.

The language spoken during Mahabharata times was similar to the present Samskrt language.

It was then referred to as Vak, “that which is spoken”. Much later it came to be called Bhasha, “the language” and it is only around 700 CE that it came to be commonly referred to as Samskrt, “the refined one”.

It is only because the language of Mahabharata, Veda and other ancient texts are similar to the Samskrt language spoken today, that one is able to understand them.

During the Mahabharata times, there was also in use, a language called Prakrt, meaning the naturally spoken language and Mlechcha, the language of the Meluha, common man and the industry.

Mlechcha in Prakrt language means that which is ungrammatical, based mainly on jargons. It was a language used in industry, by those involved in industry and craft to communicate in brief.

These cryptic jargons of their metallurgy industry, trade and farming, are what has been found in the Indus Valley seals according to the research of Dr.S.Kalyanaraman, an expert on Indus Valley Seals.

While each language is expressed using a specific script, it is also a common norm to write popular languages in scripts familiar to a populace.

All the languages in India, right from Indus Valley languages, to Prakrt, to Pali, to Ardamagadhi, to Samskrt and its derivatives, to Tamil & its derivatives, have had various scripts such as Rebus symbols as well as Indus script, & others to express themselves in written form.

Thus Samskrt texts even to this day can be found written in various scripts such as Grantha - an ancient script popular in southern parts of India, Sharada – the script popular in Kashmir, Devanagari and vernacular scripts such as Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati etc.

Samskrt, Pali, Prakrt, Tamil etc. are all spoken languages whereas Grantha, Devanagari, Sharada etc. are all written scripts.
Samskrt can be written in any of these scripts. It is also written in Roman script in which case it is called Roman with diacritics.

Samskrt texts, written using a 6th century Siddham script are preserved in Japan. This script is not found anywhere else today.
When ppl think of ancient scripts, they immediately think only of Brahmi. Brahmi is the name of script that was used in North India about 2000 yrs ago.

While Samskrt was a language, Brahmi was not a spoken language.
It was a writing script. Many ancient Pali and Samskrt texts can be found in this script. The edicts of Ashoka are in this script.

There have been many scripts prior to Brahmi too. Hieroglyphs of Harappa & Mohenjodaro from 3000 BCE are one of the precursor scripts of this civilization.
Coming back to Mahabharata text, spoken sounds of language & their meanings do not seem to have changed from then to now.

However, during various periods of time in between, this text has been written in scripts popular for those times and for that populace.

Thus even though the Mahabharata text has come down to us, in reality, the script in which it was originally written, was not the Devanagari script that we are used to reading it in, today. The Devanagari script came into practice around 1000 years ago.

Breaking The Myths - Vol 4 - About Ability

artoflivingshop.com/breaking-myths…