28 JOSN READÊ: 



At this stage of simplification, the deA'elopment of the Japanese syllabary was arrested 

 — it never grew into an alphabet. Some hold, it is true, that the Coreau alphabet is an 

 out-growth of the Japanese Katakana, but Isaac Taylor thinks that he is justified in classing 

 it rather with the Pali or Bixddhist alphabets of the Indian family.' 



" Wi'iting," says Prof. Max Millier, "was unknown in India before the fourth century 

 before Christ, and yet we are asked to believe that the Yedic literature, in its three well- 

 known periods, the Mantra, Brahmaua and Sutra periods, goes back to at least a thousand 

 years before oiir era."- Prof. W. D. AVhitney hesitates to accept this as an established fact. 

 "It is not very difficult," he says, " to conjecture a reason why the Brahmans may, while 

 acquainted with letters, have rigorously ignored them, and interdicted their confessed use, 

 in connection with their sacred literatiire." ' It is certain that writing was well known in 

 India in the middle of the third century B. C, as no less than seventeen versions of the 

 famous edicts of Asoka have been discovered, engraved on rocks and pillars in all parts of 

 the great peninsula. In one of these, what is known as the Indo-Bactrian al^ihabet was 

 employed. The alphabet used in the others, happily deciphered by Prinsep, is termed by 

 Taylor the Asoka, in honor of the ilkistrious author of the edicts. It is also variously 

 called the South Asoka, (to distinguish it from the Indo-Bactrian or North Asoka), the 

 Magadhi and the Maurya (from the names of Asoka's kingdom and dynasty), the Indo- 

 Pali and, simply, the Indian alphabet. This alphabet is the source of the countless Indian 

 scripts — Tibetan, Pali, Nagara, Dravidian and Malay, which now divide with Chinese and 

 Japanese the literary empire of the East. But both Indo-Bactrian and Asoka, which differ 

 materially from each other, must have been developed from some older graphic system, and 

 several theories have been propounded to account for their origins. Some trace them to 

 the Cireeks, others to the Semites, while a third class of inquirers maintain that they are 

 native to the soil. To the theory maintained by Gen. Cunningham that they grew out 

 of a primitive picture-writing, Mr. Taylor objects that the parent script evidently pos- 

 sessed a small number of signs which had to be augmented by differentiation, whereas 

 analogy would demand a number of characters far in excess of the requirements of an 

 alphabet. He will only admit the bare possibility of their native origin. To persons not 

 deeply versed in the science of epigraphy, it might seem more difficult to believe that a 

 people who had produced such a literature as the Indians should not have developed an 

 alphabet, as its normal and almost necessary accompaniment. The policy of Asoka shows 

 that, if the Brahman priesthood were unfriendly to the Htera scriptn for sacerdotal reasons, 

 the less exclusive Buddhists were glad to avail themselves of its aid in spreading their 

 doctrines. Commenting on the fact that the inscriptions of Asoka were composed neither 

 in the Sanskrit of the Vedic hymns, nor in the later Sanskrit of the Brahmanas and Sutras, 

 but in the local dialects as then spoken in India, Professor Max MiiUer thus questions and 

 answers : " What follo-ws from this ? First, that the archaic Sanskrit of the Veda had 

 ceased to be spoken before the third century B. C. Secondly, that even the later gramma- 

 tical Sanskrit was no longer spoken and understood by the people at large ; that Sanskrit 



' Tlie Alphabet, i. 36. A journal has recently been established in Japan (the Honwji Zanhi) with tlie object 

 of introducing the Roman aliilialiet in spelling Japanese words. It is partially supporteil by the Government 

 and is the organ of a society of 4,200 members, whose aim is the substitution of Roman for Chinese characters 

 in Japanese. 



'' India : Wliat can it teacli us ? Lect- vii. ■' Oriental and Linguistic Studies, p. 86. 



