Origins of Telugu Script

September 23, 2004

>From kishore_future Wed Sep 22 08:18:40 2004

Return-Path: <kishore_future>

X-Sender: kishore_future

X-Apparently-

Received: (qmail 90347 invoked from network); 22 Sep 2004 15:18:40 -

0000

Received: from unknown (66.218.66.167)

by m25.grp.scd. with QMQP; 22 Sep 2004 15:18:40 -0000

Received: from unknown (HELO web8506.mail.in.)

(202.43.219.168)

by mta6.grp.scd. with SMTP; 22 Sep 2004 15:18:38 -0000

Message-ID: <20040922151835.22765.qmail@w...>

Received: from [220.226.23.77] by web8506.mail.in. via HTTP;

Wed, 22 Sep 2004 16:18:35 BST

Wed, 22 Sep 2004 16:18:35 +0100 (BST)

, ,

indology, essays,

indiaarchaeology

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-969998017-

1095866315=:22626"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 202.43.219.168

kishore shrishti <kishore_future>

telugu and indus script

X--Group-Post: member; u=172519560

X--Profile: kishore_future

--0-969998017-1095866315=:22626

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

http://www.engr.mun.ca/~adluri/telugu/language/script/script1a.html

Note: In the following write up, two (or more) different spellings

have been used for certain key words. The word in normal color

denotes the usual spelling in English. The word in an alternate color

denotes the transliteration spelling as per RIT, e.g., Brahmi and

braahmee.

Indus Script and Telugu

The history of linguistic scripts in India followed a totally

different line from that of the languages themselves. Telugu belongs

to the Dravidian family of languages. Literate south Indian languages

except Konkani are Dravidian. Most people who speak the languages

belonging to this family now live in southern India. However, pockets

of people belonging to this group also live in several other parts of

the world, e.g., Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Central Asia. It

is more or less certain that the Indus seals (hieroglyphic or not)

found in the remains of Mohenjodaro and Harappa represent the proto-

dravidian language. Geographically the range of this language

extended from the Sindh river all the way up to the borders of Ganga-

Yamuna doab spreading over the Saraswati river basin in Pakistan and

India. It flourished for well over a 1000 years from around 3000 BCE.

It had a well-developed script. An example of the character set used

by this script is given below. There are more

than four hundred symbols in this script. It is highly likely that

these symbols are a mixture of hieroglyphs, ideograms, syllabic

graphs and other such patterns. So far, the available examples of the

script consist of very short phrases or sentences comprised of 5 to

26 characters. In a recent discovery (May 1999), researchers

unearthed at Harappa, what seems to be the earliest known writing in

the world -dating from 3500 BCE.

There is hardly any direct evidence referring to the state of this

language after 1700 BCE. However, from indirect evidence and a

combination of transformational and lexico-statistical analyses, we

can conclude that this language eventually blossomed into Northern,

Central, and Southern sub-families. The central Dravidian sub-family

evolved into Telugu and several other tribal languages of central and

eastern India. The southern sub family gave rise to Tamil, Kannada,

Malayalam, Kodagu and Tulu as well as some other non-literate tribal

languages. The monumental Linguistic Survey of India (pub. 1906)

carried out more than a century ago lists many of these languages. A

more recent classification, a list of over 70 languages in the

Dravidian family and some relevant statistics can be found at the

ETHNOLOGUE site. There are several changes in this list compared to

the Linguistic Survey of India (Ed. -G.A. Grierson). For example,

Grierson listed the Savara language under the Munda family,

where as the Ethnologue site places it in the Telugu sub-family.

Further research may reveal that some of these languages are actually

dialects of other languages. Conversely, more languages may be re-

classified from existing regional variants. But it is certain that

dozens of languages of south India belong to the Dravidian family.

This root family has most likely descended from the Saraswati-Sindhu

civilization. Thus, the ancient predecessor to Telugu and other

Dravidian languages had a script as depicted in the Indus seals. In

spite of several imaginative attempts, this script remains

undeciphered.

{Traditionally, within south India, the word Dravidian meant

Tamilian. The two words are etymologically related to each other.

However since the middle of the nineteenth century, perhaps because

of the lack of a better word, Dravidian is increasingly being used to

denote the commonality in South Indian roots and culture. This usage

was due to Bishop Caldwell who wrote an influential work on South

Indian Languages.}

Brahmi Script and Telugu

For some inexplicable reason, later Indian languages that succeeded

the saraswati-siMdhu proto-dravidian language seem to have suspended

the use of formal script for a long time -perhaps more than fifteen

centuries. The arrival of Aryan tribes into the sub-continent might

have triggered this in some fashion. Most current researchers believe

that these Aryan tribes had migrated from central Asia via the middle-

east and Iran. These tribes too did not employ formal script in India

for many centuries after their arrival. It is interesting to note

that since they came via the middle-east, these Aryan tribes must

have had a very clear understanding of the scripts already in use

there for a very long time. The Sumerian, and other Mesopotamian

cultures had thriving socio-political systems supported by rigorous

record keeping. Yet, no evidence for formal writing had been

unearthed in India or Pakistan between 1700 BCE and fourth century

BCE. During this time, Indians developed a vast amount

of philosophical and ritualistic literature. They also developed a

keen sense of phonetics and complicated rules of grammar and

pronunciation. In fact these rules are considered to be among the

most sophisticated ever developed. Contrary to earlier understanding

that these developments are entirely Aryan, both the Dravidian and

Aryan systems seem to have influenced these developments

significantly. It is difficult to imagine the clear establishment of

the alphabet and all the allied rules, the development of huge

kingdoms and enormous armies numbering several hundred thousand

troupes without the help of written record keeping. Researchers are

yet to satisfactorily explain this seeming contradiction. It is said

that the tradition of writing had been revived sometime after the

death of Buddha although early European researchers tended to believe

that this revival might have been around the eighth century before

Christ. The catalyst for this revival seems to be the increased

contact

with central Asia. Perhaps the big factor in this is the so-called

invasion (of parts of Indus valley) by Alexander of Macedonia in 326

BCE. He brought with him a large army as well as a large entourage of

courtiers which included scribes of various hues. The preferred

script used by these scribes seems to be Aramaic. Incidentally,

Aramaic became the international script of that time and even Jesus

of Nazareth made use of Aramaic more than his native Hebrew. These

scribes were prized for their skills and they spread out over a vast

area of Asia. They were employed in large numbers by most of the

kingdoms in the middle-east including the powerful Achaemenid empire.

They introduced the Aramaic script to Indians. This was adopted by

the peoples of the northwestern India in the form of KharOSThee. The

Nanda kings (and Mauryan emperors who succeeded them) at Pataliputra

adopted a script inspired by it for all their official

communications. From this developed the Brahmi script and

eventually the modern day Devanagari. The figures below show the

early braahmee script.

The Andhra (Saatavaahana) dynasty introduced the braahmee to the

present day Kannada and Telugu regions. The earliest inscriptions

found in the Tamil land belong to more or less the same period. A

number of early Satavahana coins and other remains were found in

Tamil Nadu. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Satavahanas

introduced the script to the Tamil country also. The Satavahanas

were, for some time, vassals of the Mauryan Empire. Mauryan Emperor

Asoka the great (reign: 269-232 BCE) and the rise of Buddhism played

stellar roles in championing this spread of writing. Thus, Telugu and

all the other south Indian languages had developed from the proto-

dravidian language of the Indus valley while their scripts descended

from the braahmee.

There are direct or indirect references to 'lipi,'

liKh,' 'lEKha,' 'liKhita,' etc., in the literature belonging to the

periods before this perceived spread of braahmee. Researchers,

especially the western scholars tended to explain these references as

belonging to the art of painting rather than of writing. In the

absence of a convincing proof to the contrary, it may be safe to

assume that the prevailing theories are reasonably representative of

history. The essence of these theories is that, barring their

connection with the Indus culture, existing Indian languages did not

have any formal script before the fourth century BCE. All the current

Indian scripts including the Telugu script have descended from the

braahmee which was inspired, at least partly by the Aramaic and other

western scripts.

{There are several voices that oppose the main stream theories from

scientific, political, sociological and emotional points of view

(e.g., Invasion That Never Was and Myth of the Aryan Invasion). The

gist of these alternate theories is that the Aryans, their culture

and language were all indigenous. Any incidental similarities between

India and the West can be explained away. These voices are yet to

gain any respectability in terms of scientific rigor and completeness

of their arguments although they are becoming increasingly

elaborate.}

Descent of Telugu Script from Brahmi

The chart below outlines the descent of various Indic scripts from

the braahmee.

Cautionary Note: The figure indicates the most probable routes for

the evolution of modern scripts. Care must be taken in reading these

routes. For example, Telugu script has been shown as a descendent

of "old Kannada" script. It does not in any way mean that the

language (as opposed to the script) has descended from Kannada.

Kannada became a literate language slightly ahead of Telugu. For

example, both Kannada and Telugu had produced poetry during the

eighth century. Kannada writers had also produced full-fledged

literary works in the ninth century. But it was two more centuries

before major poetic works in Telugu became available. That is the

reason for the combined Telugu-Kannada script to have been called as

the "old Kannada." This in turn does not mean that Telugu people were

non-literate during the periods when Kannada and Tamil people were

producing works of literature. Writers in Telugu land had been

continuously engaged in creating literary, religious or philosophical

works

in Prakrit and Sanskrit from long before Christ. While the Tamil and

Kannada writers had switched to writing in their local languages in

the first century CE and the eighth century CE respectively, Telugu

writers waited till the 11th century. The major reasons for this

state of affairs include socio-political factors such as royal

patronage and the influence of Buddhism and Jainism, among other

things.

Further Reading and Acknowledgements

Origin of the Indian script systems has been discussed in great

detail by several authors. The above discussion is confined to

outlining the essentials of Telugu script evolution.

A very good review of the current position among leading western

scholars regarding the recent (as opposed to Indus) origin of Indian

scripts is given by Richard Salomon of the University of Washington.

Dr. Solomon himself is currently preparing a scholarly work on the

subject. Similarly, Iravatham Mahadevan's paper "An Encylopaedia of

the Indus Script" published in the International Journal of Dravidian

Linguistics (Trivandrum, Jan. 1997) is a review of Asko Parpola's

encyclopedic work "Deciphering the Indus Script." Mahadevan himself

carried out a major study of the Indus seals and prepared a major

study and concordance of Indus seals and characters.

An excellent compilation of the online resources regarding Indian

scripts and related aspects is provided by Dr. Yashwant Malaiya

(Click here). A vast amount of material on the Saraswati-Sindhu

civilization is being compiled by Kalyanaraman. An informatively

created page on world scripts is maintained by Lawrence Lo. The two

Brahmi script gifs are courtesy of Mr. Lo.

m kishore mohan

India Matrimony: Find your life partneronline.

--0-969998017-1095866315=:22626

Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

<DIV>

<TBODY>

<TR>

</TD></TR>

<TR>

<A

href="http://www.engr.mun.ca/~adluri/telugu/language/script/script1a.h

tml">http://www.engr.mun.ca/~adluri/telugu/language/script/script1a.ht

ml</A></TD>

<A

href="http://www.engr.mun.ca/~adluri/telugu/language/script/script1b.h

tml">Next <IMG border=0 height=13

src=" "

width=13></A></TD></TR>

<TR>

</TD>

</TD>

</TD></TR>

<TR>

<TD bgColor=#800080 colSpan=3 vAlign=top><FONT color=#00ff00

size=6>

Origins of Telugu Script </TD></TR>

<TR>

<TR>

Note: In the following write up, two (or more)

different spellings have been used for certain key words. The word in

normal color denotes the usual spelling in English. The word in an

alternate color denotes the transliteration spelling as per RIT,

e.g., Brahmi and braahmee.

</TD></TR>

<TR>

<TR>

Indus Script and Telugu</TD></TR>

<TR>

The history of linguistic scripts in India followed

a totally different line from that of the languages themselves.

Telugu belongs to the Dravidian family of languages. Literate south

Indian languages except Konkani are Dravidian. Most people who speak

the languages belonging to this family now live in southern India.

However, pockets of people belonging to this group also live in

several other parts of the world, e.g., Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal,

and Central Asia. It is more or less certain that the Indus seals

(hieroglyphic or not) found in the remains of Mohenjodaro and Harappa

represent the proto-dravidian language. Geographically the range of

this language extended from the Sindh river all the way up to the

borders of Ganga-Yamuna doab spreading over the Saraswati river basin

in Pakistan and India. It flourished for well over a 1000 years from

around 3000 BCE. It had a well-developed script. An example of the

character set used by this script is given below.

There are more than four hundred symbols in this script. It is highly

likely that these symbols are a mixture of hieroglyphs, ideograms,

syllabic graphs and other such patterns. So far, the available

examples of the script consist of very short phrases or sentences

comprised of 5 to 26 characters. In a recent <A

href="http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_334000/33

4517.stm">discovery</A> (May 1999), researchers unearthed

at Harappa, what seems to be the earliest known writing in the world -

dating from 3500 BCE. </TD></TR>

<TR>

<IMG

src="http://www.engr.mun.ca/~adluri/telugu/language/script/indus_seal2

..jpg"></TD></TR>

<TR>

<TR>

There is hardly any direct evidence referring to the

state of this language after 1700 BCE. However, from indirect

evidence and a combination of transformational and lexico-statistical

analyses, we can conclude that this language eventually blossomed

into Northern, Central, and Southern sub-families. The central

Dravidian sub-family evolved into Telugu and several other tribal

languages of central and eastern India. The southern sub family gave

rise to Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Kodagu and Tulu as well as some

other non-literate tribal languages. The monumental Linguistic Survey

of India (pub. 1906) carried out more than a century ago lists many

of these languages. A more recent classification, a list of over 70

languages in the Dravidian family and some relevant statistics can be

found at the <A

href="http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/families/Dravidian.html">ETHNOL

OGUE</A> site. There are several changes in this list compared

to the Linguistic Survey of

India (Ed. -G.A. Grierson). For example, Grierson listed the Savara

language under the Munda family, where as the Ethnologue site places

it in the Telugu sub-family. Further research may reveal that some of

these languages are actually dialects of other languages. Conversely,

more languages may be re-classified from existing regional variants.

But it is certain that dozens of languages of south India belong to

the Dravidian family. This root family has most likely descended from

the Saraswati-Sindhu civilization. Thus, the ancient predecessor to

Telugu and other Dravidian languages had a script as depicted in the

Indus seals. In spite of several imaginative attempts, this script

remains undeciphered. </TD></TR>

<TR>

{Traditionally, within south India, the word

Dravidian meant Tamilian. The two words are etymologically related to

each other. However since the middle of the nineteenth century,

perhaps because of the lack of a better word, Dravidian is

increasingly being used to denote the commonality in South Indian

roots and culture. This usage was due to Bishop Caldwell who wrote an

influential work on South Indian Languages.} </TD></TR>

<TR>

<TR>

Brahmi Script and Telugu</TD></TR>

<TR>

<TR>

For some inexplicable reason, later Indian languages

that succeeded the saraswati-siMdhu proto-

dravidian language seem to have suspended the use of formal script

for a long time -perhaps more than fifteen centuries. The arrival of

Aryan tribes into the sub-continent might have triggered this in some

fashion. Most current researchers believe that these Aryan tribes had

migrated from central Asia via the middle-east and Iran. These tribes

too did not employ formal script in India for many centuries after

their arrival. It is interesting to note that since they came via the

middle-east, these Aryan tribes must have had a very clear

understanding of the scripts already in use there for a very long

time. The Sumerian, and other Mesopotamian cultures had thriving

socio-political systems supported by rigorous record keeping. Yet, no

evidence for formal writing had been unearthed in India or Pakistan

between 1700 BCE and fourth century BCE. During

this time, Indians developed a vast amount of philosophical and

ritualistic literature. They also developed a keen sense of phonetics

and complicated rules of grammar and pronunciation. In fact these

rules are considered to be among the most sophisticated ever

developed. Contrary to earlier understanding that these developments

are entirely Aryan, both the Dravidian and Aryan systems seem to have

influenced these developments significantly. It is difficult to

imagine the clear establishment of the alphabet and all the allied

rules, the development of huge kingdoms and enormous armies numbering

several hundred thousand troupes without the help of written record

keeping. Researchers are yet to satisfactorily explain this seeming

contradiction. It is said that the tradition of writing had been

revived sometime after the death of Buddha although early European

researchers tended to believe that this revival might have been

around the eighth century before Christ. The catalyst for this

revival seems to be the increased contact with central Asia. Perhaps

the big factor in this is the so-called invasion (of parts of Indus

valley) by Alexander of Macedonia in 326 BCE. He brought with him a

large army as well as a large entourage of courtiers which included

scribes of various hues. The preferred script used by these scribes

seems to be Aramaic. Incidentally, Aramaic became the international

script of that time and even Jesus of Nazareth made use of Aramaic

more than his native Hebrew. These scribes were prized for their

skills and they spread out over a vast area of Asia. They were

employed in large numbers by most of the kingdoms in the middle-east

including the powerful Achaemenid empire. They introduced the Aramaic

script to Indians. This was adopted by the peoples of the

northwestern India in the form of <FONT

color=#000080>KharOSThee. The Nanda kings (and Mauryan

emperors who succeeded them) at Pataliputra adopted a script inspired

by it for all their

official communications. From this developed the Brahmi script and

eventually the modern day Devanagari. The figures below show the

early braahmee script. </TD></TR>

<TR>

<IMG

src="

"></TD></TR>

<TR>

<IMG

src="

"></TD></TR>

<TR>

<TR>

The Andhra (Saatavaahana)

dynasty introduced the braahmee to the