Buddhism brought writing to India

By P.K.Balachandran/Sunday Observer

Colombo, September 29: It was Buddhism which brought writing to India. Prior to its advent, thought and knowledge were not written down but wholly committed to memory and transmitted orally from generation to generation.  

The initial reason for this was the absence of suitable writing materials. Clay, copper plate and stone were used but all had limitations.

However, the most important reason for not writing down thoughts whether religious or secular, was the Hindu Brahmin priesthood’s vested interest in keeping knowledge, including religious knowledge, to itself.  

The priestly class wanted to legitimise its high status in the caste order (the Hindu social and cultural hierarchy) by monopolising the approach to knowledge which at that time was predominantly religious.

The Brahmins insisted that the sacred Hindu scriptures called the Vedas be committed to memory and spread only by word of mouth. Committing the scriptures to writing would expose them to the eyes of the rest of the unequal people and end the monopoly the priestly class of Brahmins enjoyed.

Moreover, the Vedas were in Sanskrit, the language of the elite, while the language of the hoi polloi was Pali and other local dialects.

The Buddha challenged this monopolistic system. He denounced the caste hierarchy. Therefore, his followers committed his philosophy and sayings to writing, using the folk language, Pali, rather than the elitist Sanskrit. His messages spread easily as a result.

The first cases of writing (on palm leaves or stone) in India occurred in the Buddhist era. And they were the work of Buddhists, says Dr. Thomas William Rhys Davids, the founder of the Pali Text Society in London in his book: Buddhist India (T.Fisher Unwin London, 1911).  

Son of a clergyman, Rhys Davids (1848-1922), was an officer of the Ceylon Civil Service (CCS) who served in Galle and Anuradhapura. While in Ceylon he got interested in Pali and Buddhism. After he was asked to leave the CCS for some minor transgressions, he specialized in Buddhism, became a Professor in Manchester University, and set up the Pali Text Society in London.

In his book Buddhist India Rhys Davids traces the history of writing in India where Buddhism was born. Explaining the prevalence of oral communication rather than written communication in India, Dr.Rhys Davids said that this was partly because of the absence of writing material.

Palm bark, clay, metal plate and stone were used. But what could be written were only short messages. Writing books or manuscripts as we know today was out of the question.

But Rhys Davids noticed that, strangely, even when writing material like the bark appeared on the scene and was being used, there was a disinclination to put things in writing. This was so for centuries, until  Buddhism appeared on the scene.

Buddhism brought about a revolution in thinking on this matter. The Silas based on the conversational discourses of the Buddha, were the first to be put in writing. This was in the first century after the Buddha’s death, say around 450 BC. The Silas contained a list of things a member of the Buddhist order should not do.

In the Vinaya which are rules of discipline for Buddhist monks, writing (Lekha) is praised as a “distinguished art.” In the Buddhist era in India, knowledge of writing was not confined to any one class or caste or any one gender.

However, in the early days, writing had a very limited function even in the Buddhist era. It was used to publicise the ruler’s orders or by individuals to communicate with each other. Centuries elapsed before tracts and manuscripts as we know today were written.

For example in the articles listed in early Buddhist documents, books or manuscripts are not mentioned. There are references to “texts” but these texts had been committed to memory and not written.

What was committed to memory was repeated endlessly and passed on from person to person, from group to group,from generation to generation. The Patimokkha consisting of 224 Rules of the Order, was recited monthly in each monastic settlement so that it was learnt by heart. This was the only way ancient thoughts were preserved.

Nevertheless, the Buddhists recognised the advantages of the written word. Bhikkus were aware that Buddhism might disappear if texts were not written down and preserved. Rhys Davids points to Anguttara 2.147, in which, among four causes of disappearance of Buddhism, one was not committing the Suttantas to writing.

Scripts

It is generally accepted that Indian alphabets (Akshara or indelible) are derived from the North and South Sematic alphabets. A certain proportion of the oldest Indian letters are identical with letters on certain Assyrian weights and also with the Mesha inscription of the  Seventh and Ninth century BC.

Assyria was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed from the 21st century BC to 14th century BC and was an empire from 14th century BC to the 7th century BC. The Mesha inscriptions dated as 840 BC, are etched on Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite stone.

But Rhys Davies feels that this link is untenable. The borrowing could have been from an earlier age when writing in what we know call West Asia was from the left to right and not from right to left.

In Seventh Century BC, there was trade between Babylon and the West coast of India, not before that. According to the Maritime History of India, the earliest literary evidence about Sopara and Bharukachcha (Baroach) ports on the West coast of India, is contained in the Samyutta Nikaya of the Pali Buddhist canon.

Here, Sopara is referred to as Sunaparantaka which was the home of the merchant Punna, a disciple of the Buddha. West coast merchants who traded with Babylon were Dravidians and not Aryans, says Rhys Davids.

These traders were acquainted with the letters used by the Akkadians of Mesopotamia. The Akkadian Empire existed between 2334 BC and 2154 BC. The Akkadian script was brought to India in the eighth or the seventh Century BC. Here it was modified to suit local Indian dialects.

It took a thousand years for the Akkadian script to get transformed into the Brahmi script or Lipi (the Sublime Script). It was from the Brahmi Lipi that all the alphabets now used in India, Myanmar, Thailand and Sri Lanka evolved.

Material

To begin with, Indians wrote on impervious birch bark with an iron stylus. But birch trees grew only on the highest altitudes among trees at typically more than 3500 meters above sea level. In India they can only be seen in the Himalayan region.

Since no ink was used, scratchings on birch bark tended to disappear and the bark withered.

It was only later that the Corypha Umbraculifera, or the Talipot palm, was used for writing. Talipot palm is native to eastern and southern India and Sri Lanka. However, though the Talipot palm was easily available, writing of books was not possible until indelible ink was discovered to substitute mere scratching with an iron stylus.

But books were not written even after ink was discovered. As pointed out earlier, the Vedic priestly class did not want their mantras (charms or verses) to be read by anyone else but they.

In this situation, it is not surprising that the oldest Indian manuscripts on bark or palm leaves are Buddhist.  “It is the Buddhists who first made use of writing to record their canonical books. The earliest mention of writing is in the voluminous priestly literature Vashista Dharma Sutra, one of the later law books,” Rhys Davids points out.

Though archaeologist Gen. Alexander Cunningham maintained that  Indian alphabets were “Indian” or Aryan in origin, Rhys Davids believes that as per available evidence, the Indian alphabet is not Aryan at all. It was introduced to India by sea-going Dravidian merchants.

Sanskrit is an older language than Pali but the earliest writings were in Pali not Sanskrit. In Emperor Asoka’s time ( 268 BC to 232 BC) for example, Pali was used so that his messages would reach the common man.

Sanskritization

But gradually, Sanskritization of the indigenous languages took place and inscriptions began to use a mix of Pali and Sanskrit. Over a period of time, Sanskrit was equated with scholarship and dignity.  Sanskrit became the language of learning and a means of communication across linguistic boundaries just as Latin became the language of learning, sophistication and communication across frontiers in Europe.

That this is recent development is seen in the fact that oldest coin in India which bears an inscription in Sanskrit is dated 200 AD. The coin was struck at the time of king Satyadaman, one of the Western Satraps. The Western Satraps were Indo-Scythian (Sakka or Sakya) rulers of the western and central parts of India between 35 AD and 415 AD.

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