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

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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