Syllabic versus Alphabetic Scripts

[Venkatraman Iyer]

Thiru. N. R. Joshi wrote:

>To the best of my knowledge, Devanagari is syllabic script while
>Roman is alphabetic script.

True, the nagari script is syllabaries, M. Deshpande's Sanskrit
book has several pages running to encompass all consonant-clusters
of Sanskrit in nagari. But, Harvard-Kyoto system used here
or with diacritics in academic printed works is simpler.

>I do not know the category of the ancient Indian Brahmi
>script. Is their any reason for the ancient Indians going in the direction
>of syllabic Devanagari instead of alphabetic script? >Devanagari produces
>almost all sounds of Sanskrit faithfully.
>Was this true of Brahmi? Was Brahmi ever used to write Sanskrit?

Because vedas and Panini preceded Ashoka, and the syllabaries
in grammars formed due to oral memory traditions, brahmi
is syllabic too. But around 150 AD only we have Skt. inscriptions.
Prof. Witzel wrote about some short ones in Mathura little earlier.

>When did the Granth script of South India come into existence? What is the
>earliest inscrition(or writing) in Devanagari found in India? I read that
>Vietnam has Devanagari inscription
>from 8th century AD. Thanks. N.R.JOshi.

Vietnam and regions near it have much earlier inscriptions
employing South Indian grantham letters. Grantham was due to
Pallavan rule.

Regards,
V. Iyer


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