--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

> Salomon accepts the Mahadevan interpretation but notes that it was

an

> aberration and was abandoned after the period dealt with in the new
> edition of Old Tamil inscriptions. He notes one other area where

the

> abugida seems to have turned into an alphabet (where the plain

akshara

> represents C only).

I think that what we are talking about here is a system in which all
vowels, including short a, were represented by a mark added to the
consonant. This system *preceded* the system in which there is an
inherent short 'a' vowel. So alphabet to abugida?? (And now that I
have surfed the net on this I find that Mahadevan's ideas were
accepted in the 70's, not so recent.)

The next interesting point is that there is a theory which claims
that Brahmi could be the invention of an individual who based
symbols on geometric forms. Sounds like a sophisticated grammatogeny
(?) - don't you think. I would never suggest that it was invented
by someone who did not already know what writing was but that it was
invented and not derived.

http://www.cmi.ac.in/gift/Epigraphy/epig_invention.htm

The Invention of the Brahmi Script.
Madras Christian College Magazine, Vol. 46, 1977
also in, Indological Essays Commemorative Volume II for Gift
Siromoney
edited by Michael Lockwood, Madras Christian College, 1992

"Here we wish to claim that the Brahmi script was invented at one
strokepossibly by one individual. This means that we reject both the
theory that it was evolved from the Indus script and also the theory
that it was borrowed and developed from some non-Indian script.

The basis we have for postulating the spontaneous invention of the
Brahmi script, as against a continuous evolutionary derivation, is
as follows. We can show that there were central, unifying principles
from which most of the letters of the Brahmi alphabet can be
derived. We claim that there were two basic geometric patterns from
which the inventor of the Brahmi script derived the letters. These
basic patterns were the cross inscribed in a square, and a circle
superimposed on a vertical line."

Suzanne