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Re: Devanagari (was Re: sorry Mark Lang...)

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Monday, June 21, 2004, 15:37
At 20:45 6/20/2004, Scott Heath wrote:
>The Indian grammarian Pannini used Brahmi for his writings, including his >all-important and rather algebraic Sandhi-- something like Euclid's axioms >for Sanskrit morphosyntax.
It is by no means certain that Paa.nini used any writing at all, rather the contrary in fact. Note also that Brahmi was first devised for Middle IndoAryan languages (Prakrits), and was rather ill-suited for Sanskrit with its many consonant clusters. In fact the first Prakrit inscriptions predate the first Sanskrit inscriptions by several centuries. It is worthy of note that both scholars and clerics in India (which often are the same persons) have put great store on learning texts orally by heart. Writing was businessmen's business. /BP 8^) -- B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X) Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant! (Tacitus)

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Scott Heath <sheath@...>