India has a lot of… everything, really;
people, languages, religions, old kingdoms, and so on. So in a sense it’s not all too surprising
that India also has a fair collection of different writing systems, but considering how Europe
is also diverse in languages yet these languages only use 4 different scripts (5 if you count
Armenian), why does almost every language in India (and furthermore in Southeast Asia)
seem have its own writing system? [This video was brought to you by Squarespace] Well first, as always, it’s best to familiarize
ourselves with what exactly we’re talking about. Now I might have specified “India” in
the title, but it would be better to look at the Indian Subcontinent as a whole. The most widely used script in this region,
and fourth most widely in the world, is Devanagari (you know, that script with the continuous
line through it), used by 600 million people speaking over 120 different languages, including
most notably Hindi and Marathi. Next are the Bengali-Assamese scripts, used
by… Bengali and Assamese, then Telugu, then Tamil,
Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Gurmukhi (used by Punjabi), Odia, Sinhala, and Thaana in
the Maldives. That’s nearly a dozen different writing
systems, without even including the modified Arabic script that Pakistan uses, or the Latin
alphabet, or indeed many other smaller scripts. Probably the biggest thing to understand about
all these scripts is that they’re all closely related. These and many other scripts in Southeast
Asia all form a family known as the Brahmic scripts. This family of scripts all shares a common
ancestor in the form of the Brahmi script, a now extinct abugida used from the 3rd century
BC to the 5th century AD. In fact, the Europe comparison I made in the
intro is somewhat apt, as the Brahmi script itself shares a common ancestor with Latin,
Greek, and Cyrillic, as well as Hebrew and Arabic: Phoenician. Actually you can sort of consider this an
informal part two to my History of the Latin Alphabet video (don’t watch it now, watch
it later, I’ll put it in the end screen). The Phoenician script was an abjad used by…
well the Phoenicians, not exactly a mystery. The Phoenicians were widely known as major
seafaring traders, setting up colonies and trading ports all across the Mediterranean. Compared to the other logographic or syllabic
scripts of the time, Phoenician was quite a flexible script. Since every letter corresponded directly to
a single sound, the script was easy to use and tailor to other languages, with modification. The Greeks did this, from which spawned all
the European writing systems I mentioned earlier, but by far the most prolific descendant of
Phoenician was the Aramaic abjad. Phoenicia: Hey kid, wanna buy some consonants? Arameans: Uh… consonants? Phoenicia: Yeah man, each of these markings
represent sounds, put them together and you can make words! It’s like what they’ve been doing in Egypt
and Babylon but far easier to learn! Arameans: Eh I don’t know, didn’t Athens
say that stuff will mess with your memory? Phoenicia: Oh you’ve clearly been listening
to too much Socrates lately. No, this can be shaped to fit basically any
language. Seriously this stuff will make you immortal! Whadda you say? Arameans: Eh… okay sure I’ll give it a
try. Phoenicia: Excellent, you won’t regret it! Arameans: Yeah, I might maybe modify this
a bit, but I could see other peoples using this. Phoenicia: Yeah exactly! Alright nice talking with you, gotta hit up
the Athenians on that stuff now! And soon a writing craze spread throughout
the region. The Aramaic script was used for well over
1,000 years in the Middle East, with the Aramaic language becoming the lingua franca of the
Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires, and particularly the Persian Achaemenid Empire,
which just so happened to stretch all the way east to the Indus River. Of course the Empire used Old Persian (which
used a cuneiform script) as its official language, but after conquering Mesopotamia they started
to use Aramaic as a common tongue between all the vast groups within the Empire, and
thus also came Aramaic’s remix of the Phoenician script. Persians: Hey, Nabateans, have this writing
system. Hey, Israelites, I’m letting you all go
back to Jerusalem, here have this writing system as well. Oh hey, Arameans, thanks for the writing system
by the way! Arameans: Oh yeah no problem! I’m gonna go to Central Asia now. Persians: Okay, tell the Sogdians, the Uyghurs,
and the Mongols I said hi! Hey, Northwest Indians, I know you’re gonna
have a blast with this. Hey, Macedonians… [punch] Oh no I’m being
conquered at an alarming rate! After the fall of the Achaemenids though,
the Aramaic script no longer had a central authority behind it, allowing for different
cursives and variations to become more popular in different areas, as happened with Hebrew,
Arabic, Old Uyghur, Mongolian, Manchu, and in Northern India with Kharosthi, Pahlavi,
and particularly Brahmi. While Kharosthi and Pahlavi didn’t really
go anywhere, the Brahmi script was used for languages all across the Indian subcontinent,
including Sanskrit, Tocharian, and older versions of Kannada, Telugu, and Tamil, with some of
the earliest known inscriptions being in an older Indo-Aryan language known as Prakrit,
one of the earliest notable examples being the Edicts of Ashoka. Brahmi was, like most of its descendants,
an abugida, as opposed to its abjad ancestors. However, Phoenician and Aramaic were Afro-Asiatic
Semitic languages whereas the languages of Northern India were Indo-European Indo-Aryan
languages, which of course meant they were… quite different. This was especially true in phonology, with
Aramaic having letters for certain sounds found in Semitic languages but no letters
for the myriad of different sounds found in South Asia, such as aspirated sounds. Thus, like how the Greeks repurposed certain
Phoenician letters to become vowels (thereby creating an alphabet), certain Aramaic letters
were repurposed to make sounds that no Semitic language ever had (though exactly how is still
up for debate). Socrates: Hey! We’re on the case for someone spreading
writing around here. You see any of those types? Cholas: Uh… no. Socrates: Alright, well let us know if you
do. We set up some wanted posters to remind you
all. Cholas: Uh okay… why’s it blank? Socrates: Well we can’t have any writing
about here... oh right… The script eventually started to split into
two different variations, one used in the north with its primarily Indo-European languages
and one in the south with its primarily Dravidian languages (well Sinhala is actually Indo-European
but you know, proximity). Over time, through steady contact with these
regions, Northern Brahmi would spread north into Tibet and Central Asia and Southern Brahmi
would spread east from South Asia into Southeast Asia. Hey oh my god that’s like math or something
like that! In the north the script steadily evolved into
the Gupta script, used by the Gupta Empire. The script then split into three groups; Siddham,
Sharada, and Tibetan. Siddham split off into Bengali, Assamese,
and Nagari (and thus Devanagari), Sharada eventually gave us Gurmukhi, and Tibetan split
off into a few smaller scripts as well. Brahmi however has even more descendants outside
the Indian subcontinent, particularly arising from the south. The Pallava script first showed up in around
the 4th century AD, when most of southern India was ruled by the Pallava dynasty (yeah
they cut straight to the point with these names). Within India the script then split into Tamil
and Grantha, the latter branching off into Malayalam (and a few others). Sri Lanka’s Sinhala also developed directly
from Brahmi. Meanwhile, Pallava had been exported to Southeast
Asia through the Pallavas’ sick trading skills and branched off into Old Mon, Khmer,
Cham, and Kawi. From these scripts we eventually get Burmese,
Thai and Lao, and via Kawi we get a whole host of scripts across the Nusantara Archipelago,
including Javanese, Balinese, Batak, and Baybayin. Or at least… [scream] wait, okay relax! If you follow me on Instagram you’d know
what’s going on. Or at least… sort of, something like that. You see, while researching how these scripts
developed and split from one another, I found a lot of my sources disagreed with one another
on the specifics… like a lot. However I think that kind of makes sense,
after all if we just say “this script split up and evolved into these scripts which gave
us these scripts” like some sort of rigid family tree, that kind of discredits the fact
that these cultures still intermingled regularly. But unfortunately I was too lazy to research
this properly… I mean I couldn’t fit it into the video. Crap did I leave the brutal honesty filter
on again? India has been united before (or at least
mostly united) by empires spreading their influence across the subcontinent– the Mauryas,
the Guptas, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals– but never for as long as Rome over Europe
or China’s dynasties over… China, which might explain why these places
have so relatively few writing systems as compared to India. Ultimately these scripts not only withstood
the test of time and foreign conquest, but remained in common use to this day within
their respective regions. Socrates: [sniffs] I’m getting close… I’ll get you one of these days, Phoenicia! [AD] Hey kid… wanna build yourself a website? Then you’ve come to the right place! Because this video’s sponsor Squarespace
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