Dear Konrad,

This is most interesting: that the Brahmi script and writing is available
during the Buddha's time. We have names like Ga.naka Moggallaa.na, who was
probably some sort of accountant, and maybe had written records his
transactions, Generally, there is no clear reference to writing being used
in religious matters.

Traditionally, we are told that nothing was written down until perhaps
Asoka's time, and certainly around the beginning of the Common Era in Sri
Lanka for religio-political reasons.

Could I have some sort of documented study in the statement tha Brahmi goes
back to the Buddha's time and related matters?

Thanks & Happy New Year.

Piya Tan
"Pali House" Singapore

On 1/3/07, akoddsson <konrad_oddsson@...> wrote:
>
> Ashoka used the Brahmi script in his inscriptions, which was usual in
> India at the time. Brahmi was probably originally invented to write
> Sanskrit and dialects older than Pali, but was no doubt used to write
> Pali in the Buddha's time (originally a Magadhi-dialect, I think).
> New finds from south India have pushed the dating of Brahmi back from
> Ashoka's time to the Buddha's, giving us every reason to believe that
> this was the Buddha's alphabet. There are some variations in the
> characters, which were variously used for rock-inscriptions, palm-
> leaf-writing, etc.. Macintosh has a Brahmi-font available, based on
> the forms in Ashoka's inscriptions. The alphabets of India, Burma,
> Tailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Tibet, etc. (most south-east Asian
> alphabets) all derive from Brahmi, which makes it the ideal alphabet
> for writing Pali, in my opinion, not to mention that Buddha himself
> would almost certainly have understood it. Anyway, that's my brief
> input on the script-issue. There are Wikipedia articles and various
> other items online about Brahmi, some showing the alphabet. I have
> seem the Macintosh Brahmi font, and it looks very nice :)
>
> A.K.Oddsson
>
> --- In Pali@yahoogroups.com <Pali%40yahoogroups.com>, Gunnar Gällmo
> <gunnargallmo@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- Eukesh Ranjit <eukeshranjit@...> skrev:
> >
> > > Wandanaa all,
> > > I found the link to this group in Pali wikipedia
> > > (online free to edit
> > > and free to use encyclopedia in Pali language).
> > > Currently, I am the
> > > administrator there. However, the wikipedia is not
> > > doing well due to
> > > lack of articles in the language. The lack of
> > > articles might have been
> > > due to lack of knowledge of Devnagari amongst users.
> >
> > Why Devanagari? As far as I know, Devanagari has been
> > used for Pali only for a very short time, and only
> > locally in India. Devanagari became standard script
> > for Sanskrit in the 18th century, not earlier, and
> > Pali still doesn't have a standard script. Sinhalese,
> > Burmese and Thai scripts (perhaps Khmer script as
> > well) are probably more used than Devanagari for Pali,
> > but the only Pali script that is used more than
> > locally may be Roman.
> >
> > I think the main problem for the Pali Wikipedia is the
> > fact that very few people have an active writing
> > capacity in Pali. For most of us it is an "input
> > language", a language which we try to read and
> > understand out of interest in the Pali texts, but not
> > a language in which we are able to express ourselves
> > freely.
> >
> > Gunnar
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
>


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