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of grammar. The displacement of the several groups enumerated above shows only that the Phoenicians did not adopt the Indian alphabet directly but got it through other sources, probably through the Sabeans who are known to have been in commercial communication with India about 3000 years ago, and whose alphabet is more like the Indian Bráhmí alphabet than that of the Phoenicians. Or it may be that the alphabet of some Indian grammar other than the Siva Sútras which could not very much differ in the arrangement was taken by the Phoenicians for their alphabet.

VII.--Formation of Brahmi Alphabet.

Seeing now that the Semitic alphabets and through them almost all the other alphabets were derived from the Bráhmí alphabet of the grammars, the question necessarily arises how the Brábmí symbols, which were hitherto supposed to have been adopted from the Phoenician or Sabæan, were formed. We have seen that this alphabet was arranged on the basis of sounds and the part of the mouth where they are produced, at a very early age, about the time of the great Indian Civil War. As has been said before, it was natural at the time of this arrangement of letters that the idea of making the symbols representing the sounds to show the organsp roducing them should have occurred. It was actually the case, and the symbols were reformed, and designated as Bráhmí, or revealed from the innerself (Brahma). The older symbols were then probably given the name Devanagarí, or belonging to the city of gods or ancestors. The older symbols were gradually abandoned and their use was probably confined to sacred writings. They were, it appears, soon lost, so that even the name Devanagarí is not now traceable in old books. The name has only been revived lately to indicate the script used in Upper India, including Benares the seat of Sanskrita learning.

The organs used in producing the several sounds are the palate, the tongue, the upper teeth and the lips, throat is also employed when an aspirate sound is pronounced. In the newly formed symbols the Indians, it appears, represented the palate by a straight line, and tongue sometime by a straight but

generally by a curved line according to its position in pronouncing the sounds. A small oblique line showed the upper teeth, and a small curved line the throat. Sounds requiring the use of lips are pronounced with the mouth closed, so a closed mouth represented the labials. The aspirate of any sound was, it appears, shown by adding a small curved line which represented the throat to the symbol for the original sound at some convenient place. This small curved line is, it may be noted, still used in the Persian characters as a sign of the aspirate, as the different number of dots signifies other letters. That this device was usually employed can be seen from the Mauriyan letters chh, dha and ph, which have been formed from ch, d and p. The Bhattiprolu gh has also been formed in the same way from g. The sounds of r and of the sibilants were represented by giving a wavy appearance to the tongue.

Besides the above lines representing the organs there was an index, a vertical straight line indicating the position where the sound was to be expected.

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As an illustration, the symbols for a, h, t and k were written

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The index which it will be seen is the most important line showed the letters as if hanging, and Dr. Bühler, ot being able to explain it, ascribes the hanging shape of the Bráhmí letters to the pedantry, and what not, of the Hindus.

1 It may be asked why a "h" should be added to make an aspirate which is an independent sound and pronounced from a different position of the tongue. Although the position of the tongue is slightly different, the action of the throat also always comes in, to a certain extent, in pronouncing an aspirate. This has everywhere been recognized. In Urdu a he and in English an h, are used to spell an aspirate. According to Pāņini also a "h" following a soft consonant produces the sound of the corresponding aspirate.

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There are so many sounds emanating from the same organs with very little difference in positions, that besides the index some other means of distinguishing the sounds were also perhaps adopted. For instance in the case of labials b, p and m which were all to be represented by a closed mouth, b had the shape of a rectangle made with straight lines, m had a circular shape, and p was made up of a straight and a curved or two curved lines. It is not, at this distant date, possible to guess what these distinguishing marks were. I have however tried, in the plate attached, to write down most of the letters according to the system described above. A comparison of these with the Bráhmí of the inscriptions and the present day Devanagarí characters, shows a striking similarity between the two, demonstrating that the shape of the Indian letters was actually designed in accordance with the position of the organs producing the respective sounds. This finally settles with the theory that the Indians borrowed their alphabet from the Semitic people.

VIII.—Writing in India before the Brahmi Script. We have seen in the previous chapters that the Bráhmí alphabet was arranged and designed in India, and instead of being copied from the Semitic alphabets as hitherto supposed by European scholars, was the original from which the Semitic alphabets were derived. We find it very scientifically arranged, and its letters also designed on a scientific principle. It can safely be assumed that the first idea of an alphabet and its scientific arrangement could not have occurred to the Indian sages simultaneously, and there must have been an alphabet existing in India before it was dealt with scientifically in about 1700 B.C. This was the Devanagari, 1 but it is not possible now to say what the arrangement of its letters was. Nor can their original shape be known, as the Devanagarí characters have undergone a complete change under the influence of the scientific Bráhmí script.

It is probable this was derived from some system of hieroglyphics going through the usual process of development described in chapter IV. The Aryans when they came to India from What I mean by Devanagarí has been mentioned in the previous chapter.

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