10-07-03 12:29, A.S.Sundar wrote:
> The Indic branch of IE Family of languages
> consists of more than a dozen living languages.
_Far_ more than a dozen, in fact.
> It is believed that
> all these languages use a script called "Devanagari' script .This
> script is a fully developed script with vowels and consonants
> structured in a perfect manner.
I don't know who believes that. In fact, not all of them use Devanagari
or a related writing system (such as the Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi,
Oriya and Sinhalese scripts, which are different from Devanagari). For
example, Urdu uses a modified Arabic script, and literary Romani (also
an Indic language!) uses the Latin alphabet.
> Indian History or World History does not have
> any evidence to prove that there was a language called `Devanagari'
> and it was spoken by any people, for a significantly long
> period.
Quite simply, Devanagari is the name of a _script_, not of a language.
Likewise, we have the Cyrillic script (used for Russian, Bulgarian,
Serbian and several other languages), but there is no "Cyrillic
language" (the script was originally devised for a language we now call
Old Church Slavic).
Devanagari is the traditional written medium of Classical Sanskrit, but
it's _considerably_ younger than the Old Indic literature itself. It
isn't particularly ancient. Few people, especially in Europe, realise
that Devanagari came into use as late as the seventh century AD!
> Then, the question that baffles is `How did this script
> develop?'Can any IE scholar throw some light on this riddle?
It isn't a question for IE scholars but for people who study the history
of writing systems. Devanagari is not the oldest writing system of
India. It -- and some other Indian scripts, including those used for the
non-IE Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam) --
developed out of the Brahmi system whose early form was used in the
inscriptions of Prince As'oka (3rd c. BC). Another early writing system
of India, contemporary with Brahmi, is known as Kharoshti. Both systems
are believed to have been inspired by the Aramaic consonantal script,
developed about the 8th c. BC and widely used throughout the Persian Empire.
Piotr