1859.] On the Introduction of Writing into India. 148 



compared with Brahmans, teaching their pupils, it is said : " One 

 frog repeats the words of another, like a pupil who repeats 

 the words of his teacher." No similar allusion to writing is to be 

 found even in the latest hymns, the so-called Khilas. If writing 

 had been known during the Brahmana period, is it likely that these 

 works, which are full of all kinds of mystic lucubrations on the origin 

 of all things, should never with a single word have alluded to the 

 art of writing, an art so wonderful that the Greeks would fain 

 ascribe its discovery to one of the wisest gods of the wisest nation 

 on earth ? If letters had been known during the period when men 

 in India were still able to create gods, the god of letters would have 

 found his place in the Vedic pantheon side by side with Sarasvati, 

 the goddess of speech, and Piishan, the god of agriculture. No 

 such god is to be found in India, or in any of the genuine mytholo- 

 gies of the Aryan world. 



But there are stronger arguments than these to prove that, before 

 the time of Panini, and before the first spreading of Buddhism in 

 India, writiug for literary purposes was absolutely unknown. 



If writing had been known to Panini, some of his grammatical 

 terms would surely point to the graphical appearance of words. I 

 maintain that there is not a single word in Paniui's terminology 

 which presupposes the existence of writing. The general name for 

 letters is varna. This does not mean colour in the sense of a paint- 

 ed letter, but the colouring or modulation of the voice.* AJcshara, 

 which is used for letter and syllable, means what is indestructible, 

 radical, or an element. We speak of stops as signs of interpunc- 

 tion ; Panini only speaks of viramas, stoppages of the voice. The 

 names of the letters are not derived from their shape, as in the 

 Semitic names of Alpha, Beta, Gamma. With the exception of the 

 r their names are their sounds. The name for r, Repha, does not 

 occur in Panini. Katyayana, however (iii. 3, 108, 4.), explains the 

 derivation of Repha, and in iv. 4, 128, 2, he uses it for ra. In the 

 Pratis'akhyas likewise, the word is well known, and as the participle 

 riphita is used in the same works, there can be little doubt that 

 llepha is derived from a root riph, to snarl or hiss. 



* Aristotle, Probl. X. 39. t& 5e ypdfx/J.aTa irdOr} iarl rrjs (puvrjs. 



