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Not sure what the author means by "THE alphabet". We have substantial evidence now that the Vedas were written in 2500 BC or earlier, using Devanagari - an adva

Not sure what the author means by "THE alphabet". We have substantial evidence now that the Vedas were written in 2500 BC or earlier, using Devanagari - an advanced script / alphabet system used even today. So surely, "THE" alphabet was invented much before that - somewhere around 3500 BC I would surmise.

autocorr 10y ago
The Vedas and the oldest, the Rig Veda, were composed as oral poetry and memorized. We don't have the first evidence of writing in India until inscriptions using the Brahmi script from the edicts of Ashoka around 300 BC. Even then, it would be centuries before large bodies of spoken word such as the Vedas and the Pali Canon were committed to writing. Of course there's the the Indus Valley script, but theres no real evidence to suggest that it was used to write significant and lengthy works. Especially since the IVC collapse would have predated the migration of the Aryans. But there actually doesn't need to be a common writing system, since we know for a fact it originated independently in two places, the Sumerians and the Maya. It's less clear cut (no ocean separating) but it's likely the Oracle Bone script in China was independent too.
- adictator 10y ago
  Few people in this day & age believe in the "migration of the Aryans" theory! I think it has been thoroughly debunked and has been recognized as a dishonest attempt by Christian / British historians to distort history & show that nothing original was ever developed in the Indian subcontinent.
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
I think the author makes the distinction between an alphabet sensu strictu and an alphasyllabary, or abugida. This is also how wikipedia classes Devanagari [1]: Devanagari ... also called Nagari is an abugida (alphasyllabary) alphabet of India and Nepal. The distinction is kind of subtle and like I say in another comment, the idea of using symbols to represent the shortest possible phonemes in a language was not invented by the inventors of the Proto-Sinaitic script. The OP might be exaggerating this point a bit. I'm also not totally convinced that learning a complex writing system like an ideographic script is such a big deal. After all, if all you want is a way to write down your name or a short prayer (longer prayers would be prohibitive by having to carve them on stone during either work, or breaks from work, anyway) you can always do that with ideograms. You can always learn only the few symbols that say what you want to say; you don't have to learn the entire script! Come to that, there's no real way to tell whether the people who wrote their names in the Proto-Sinaitic script actually knew how to read the entire alphabet, short as it was. Maybe they only knew the characters for their name, and then a handful of other characters outside it, perhaps the ones used in the names of popular deities or their friends etc. I mean, sure, that proto-alphabet had an easy mnemonic, but that doesn't mean that everyone who knew how to write their name in it had actually made the (small, but not nonexistent) effort to commit the entire thing to memory. It probably takes kids today a good few months to learn to read and write using an alphabet even with all the leisure and support of modern education systems. I can't see the miners of Serabit having an easier time at it. __________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari

autocorr 10y ago

The Vedas and the oldest, the Rig Veda, were composed as oral poetry and memorized. We don't have the first evidence of writing in India until inscriptions using the Brahmi script from the edicts of Ashoka around 300 BC. Even then, it would be centuries before large bodies of spoken word such as the Vedas and the Pali Canon were committed to writing. Of course there's the the Indus Valley script, but theres no real evidence to suggest that it was used to write significant and lengthy works. Especially since the IVC collapse would have predated the migration of the Aryans. But there actually doesn't need to be a common writing system, since we know for a fact it originated independently in two places, the Sumerians and the Maya. It's less clear cut (no ocean separating) but it's likely the Oracle Bone script in China was independent too.

adictator 10y ago
Few people in this day & age believe in the "migration of the Aryans" theory! I think it has been thoroughly debunked and has been recognized as a dishonest attempt by Christian / British historians to distort history & show that nothing original was ever developed in the Indian subcontinent.

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

I think the author makes the distinction between an alphabet sensu strictu and an alphasyllabary, or abugida. This is also how wikipedia classes Devanagari [1]: Devanagari ... also called Nagari is an abugida (alphasyllabary) alphabet of India and Nepal. The distinction is kind of subtle and like I say in another comment, the idea of using symbols to represent the shortest possible phonemes in a language was not invented by the inventors of the Proto-Sinaitic script. The OP might be exaggerating this point a bit. I'm also not totally convinced that learning a complex writing system like an ideographic script is such a big deal. After all, if all you want is a way to write down your name or a short prayer (longer prayers would be prohibitive by having to carve them on stone during either work, or breaks from work, anyway) you can always do that with ideograms. You can always learn only the few symbols that say what you want to say; you don't have to learn the entire script! Come to that, there's no real way to tell whether the people who wrote their names in the Proto-Sinaitic script actually knew how to read the entire alphabet, short as it was. Maybe they only knew the characters for their name, and then a handful of other characters outside it, perhaps the ones used in the names of popular deities or their friends etc. I mean, sure, that proto-alphabet had an easy mnemonic, but that doesn't mean that everyone who knew how to write their name in it had actually made the (small, but not nonexistent) effort to commit the entire thing to memory. It probably takes kids today a good few months to learn to read and write using an alphabet even with all the leisure and support of modern education systems. I can't see the miners of Serabit having an easier time at it. __________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari