Sanskrit And Its Plethora Of Scripts
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
19 October
2023
The oldest Sanskrit manuscript in Devanagari
found in India is of the 15th Century. The Spitzer Manuscripts found in
China/Central Asia are in Brahmi whereas the Manuscripts found in Eastern
Afghanistan are in Gandhari. Then, what was the language/script of Vedas ?
By Ashok Sharma 16/10/2023
Written
Sanskrit is primarily in the Devanāgarī script, though nearly all writing
systems used in India have also been used to write Sanskrit. The Vedic Sanskrit
form of Sanskrit is a sacred language, as it was the form used for composing
the Hindu sacred scripture called the Vedas.
The Vedas
and the Upanishads were originally meant to be only “ heard” - Shrutis - from
the teacher to the students. Therefore, till the early centuries of the Common
Era, they were only orally transmitted. But, when the natives of the different
parts of ancient India, started recording their texts in writing after the”
sudden” discovery of a script ( Brahmi) to record the Edicts of Emperor Ashoka
in all his conquered lands after his victory in the Battle of Kalinga, the “
writing” mania caught on with the Sanskrit scholars too, it appears. Throughout
its period of dominance, the language never had a script of its own. The
Sanskrit scholars, from the early centuries of the Common Era, borrowed the
scripts of the regions where they settled. Therefore, the language was written
in a variety of scripts.
Readers
will be surprised to know that the great scholar of Sanskrit, Acharya
Kshitimohan Sen, the maternal grandfather of Dr Amartya Sen, was a scholar of
Sanskrit. He was a Professor of Sanskrit and an M A in Sanskrit from Queen's
College, Benares. He was au fait with Devnagari script of Sanskrit which he
learnt in Varanasi. Yet, throughout his life, he wrote Sanskrit treatises and
notes in Bangla, his mother tongue! Only three original papers of Sen are
available in Devnagari script of Sanskrit.
When Adi
Shankar from the Down South engaged in polemics with the redoubtable Mandan
Mishra, the Maithili Brahmin from Saharsa, Bihar, their common language of
discourse was Sanskrit but scripts were different! Mandan Mishra used a script
that was a prototype of today's Bangla. Adi Shankar wrote Sanskrit in his
mother tongue Tamil, though he was born at Kalady, near Ernakulam which's in
Kerala. Jayadeva (12th century) used early Oriya and Bangla scripts for his
epic Geet Govinda. Even Panini's Ashtadhyayi (the most authentic work on
Sanskrit Grammar) was not written in Devnagari script of Sanskrit. Panini
hailed from Takshshila (Taxila in today's Punjab Province of Pakistan). Sharda
script was prevalent in that region, though it was originally from Kashmir.
Panini resorted to writing a big part of his text in Sharda-Sanskrit (that's
Sanskrit in Sharda script). The German scholar of Sanskrit, Max Mueller, read
and wrote Sanskrit in Roman script. Even Wendy Doniger's familiarity with
Devnagari script is pretty humdrum. But she's considered to be a scholar of
Sanskrit. The same can be said about yet another American scholar of Sanskrit,
Sheldon Pollock, who speaks Sanskrit but doesn't write it comfortably in
Devnagari script. Brahmo Samaj's Keshab Chandra Sen wrote Sanskrit in Bangla
script.
I'm of the
view that not having a definite and universally familiar script right from the
beginning, impeded the blossoming of Sanskrit as a world language. Call it my
prejudice or partiality, I find Persian and Arabic to be more stable languages
than Sanskrit because both these tongues always had a specific script. We read
Seven Odes of Pre-Islamic Arabia in early Arabic script despite many phonetic
and semantic limitations. I reiterate, it's my personal opinion as I speak
Persian and Arabic better than the way I speak Sanskrit despite knowing its
Devnagari script very well. You can pick holes in my argument and I shall
accept that gladly and sportingly.
------
A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in
comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed
articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including
Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/sanskrit-plethora-scripts/d/130932
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