Kashmir, Tamilnadu, Panini, Abhinavagupta, etc. - 5

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

Another factor we have to consider is the history of writing down Sanskrit
texts into books "grantha". According to A. L. Basham, "The Tamils... evolved
an angular script known as Grantha...It was from India, especially from the
south, that the people of South-East Asia learnt the art of writing. The
earliest surviving South-East Asian inscriptions, found in Borneo and Malaya,
and dating from the 4th or 5th centuries, are in fairly correct Sanskrit, and
in a script resembling that of the early Pallavas." (The Wonder that Was
India, p. 398).

B. Ch. Chhabra, in  Expansion of Indo-Aryan Culture, p. 72 says, "Still it is
a very remarkable fact that the earliest known inscriptions found in those
countries of the Far East are all composed in Sanskrit, all belong
approximately to the same period, viz. the fifth century, and are written in a
script which in every respect is identical with the Grantha character used at
that time on the coast of Coromandel. This is all the more noteworthy if we
remember that not a single inscription in earlier Indian writing has come to
light in those countries and islands. Neither the Brahmi of the Maurya period
nor that of the Imperial Guptas is represented in any of the records found
there.. Even more significant is the phenomenon that for several centuries the
Pallava-Grantha has remained the only script in vogue both in Further India
and in Indonesia (if at least we are to judge from the evidence of the
inscriptions) and that during this period it exhibits a development running
parallel with that which we notice in the contemporaneous records of
Coromandel...The culture of these countries during this period thus bears an
unmistakable stamp of Pallava influence."

According to R. C. Majumdar (Study of Sanskrit in South-East Asia, p. 25), a
Sanskrit inscription was discovered in a place called Vat Luong Kau dated to
be of the second half of 5th century AD. "It begins with an invocation to
brahmA, viSNu and ziva and then refers to the great king (maharAjAdhirAja) zrI
devAnIka and compares him with yudhiSThira, indra, dhanaJjaya, indradyumna,
zibi, mahApuruSa, kanakapANDya(?), the great Ocean and meru." The possible
name pANDya is of significance here.

According to Majumdar, "the great conqueror and powerful Emperor Yazovarman
(889-c. 900 A.D.) himself composed a commentary on pataJjali's mahAbhASya".(p.
18) The relationship between SE Asia and the Sanskritists of Tamil region is
also underscored by the fact that an inscription of ninth century mentions
that the royal guru of Indravarman, zivasoma, "learnt the zAstras from
bhagavat zankara" and which "furnishes the only authoritative evidence of the
date of zankarAcArya, so far known to us". (p.19)

We should also note that the cult of agastya, the malayamuni, later grew more
widespread in Java than in South India. (Chhabra, p. 78)

In "On The Origin Of The Early Indian Scripts:[1] A Review Article" by
Richard Salomon, in the Indology web site, we find, "It is certainly true that
intellectual activity in India has always strongly favored oral over written
means of expression, and both von Hinüber and Falk have effectively put to
rest the already discredited skepticism about the possibility of oral
composition and preservation of the Veda, pANini's grammar, etc. (see e.g.
Falk pp.321--7). But the fact that pANini did not use writing in composing the
aSTAdhyAyI does not necessarily mean that he was illiterate (cf. Falk p.259);
it may only mean that writing was not considered an appropriate vehicle for
intellectual endeavors of his kind." This view really should apply only to
north Indian Sanskrit situation. The earliest Tamil grammar, tolkAppiyam,
talks about some aspects of orthography of Tamil characters and scholars have
shown that its author, tolkAppiyar,  introduced a technical term "puLLi" to
indicate a pure consonant based on orthography. Thus writing down grammatical
texts must have had a longer history in Tamil and especially the potiyil
region of tolkAppiyar. This tendency could have been transferred to writing
Sanskrit grammatical texts also into granthas in the 'grantha' script. This
will fit well with the mentioning of grantha in VP 2.485.

Regards
S. Palaniapp