Kharoshthi - The Forgotten Script
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"An analysis of the history Kharoshthi script used to write the Gandhari language" The Gandhara region, which comprises modern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, has been one of the oldest cradles of civilization. Kharoshthi, the script for the Gandhari language, is accepted as one of the oldest scripts in the Indian subcontinent and indeed the world. Renewed interest in this ancient and almost forgotten form of writing has led to some deep insights into the historical and cultural evolution of the subcontinent. In this article, we explore the history, decline and revival of the Kharoshti script. |
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Introduction The communication of ideas through language has been perhaps the most significant development in the evolution of mankind. From the time when the earliest cavemen drew pictures of animals on the walls of their dwellings to invoke success in the hunt, writing has undergone a number of drastic changes. Different civilizations have developed their own scripts and writing conventions. In some cases the script has survived the civilization and left a mark on modern writing. However, a vast number of scripts have faded into obscurity as the civilization moved on. One such script is the Kharoshthi script, also known as the Gandhari script. Gandhari was a language belonging to the Prakrit family. The Kharoshthi script belongs to the Abugida or alphasyllabary writing system, which is composed of signs or graphemes denoting consonants, which have an inherent following vowel that can be modified to indicate other vowels.
Kharoshthi was a contemporary of the more widely used and better-documented Brahmi script. Both Kharoshthi and Brahmi appeared around the 3rd century B.C. Kharoshthi was in popular use in the region known as Gandhara, now in Northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. |
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The Birth of a Language A growing number of linguists now strongly believe that Kharoshthi is a descendant of Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth, with major modifications in order to serve as a script for the Prakrit language family. Some believe that Aramaic came to the region with the Achaemenid conquest of 500 B.C. and evolved over 200 years to the form that it was ultimately used in. However, in the absence of concrete proof for this theory, no firm conclusion can be made. The rock edicts and manuscripts found are in a unified, mature form.
The first observed use of Kharoshthi as a script is in the rock edicts of Asoka, found near the areas of Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra. It was deciphered by James Prinsep and others around the middle of the 19th century.
Kharoshthi's period of glory lasted some 600 years, during which time it was used in and around the Gandhara region, until it disappeared around the 3rd century A.D.
Kharoshthi was also used for official record keeping and epigraphs in the Central Asian kingdoms of Khotan and Kroraina in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. There is evidence to show that it survived in some form in the cities lying on the Northern Silk Route till as recently as the 7th century A.D. The use of Kharoshthi on the coins of the Greek rulers who seized the western Mauryan provinces around 180 B.C. has also been noted.
Kharoshthi has also been seen in the early forms of the Buddhist manuscripts found around the Gandhara region.
It was a long held belief that all the significant works of Buddhist literature were in Pali. With the discovery of the 2nd century A.D. manuscript now known as the Gandhari Dharmapada, near modern Hadda in Afghanistan, this belief took a serious jolt. The Gandhari manuscripts, which were donated to the British Library in 1994, are now acknowledged as the oldest surviving Buddhist documents. The realization that the Kharoshthi/Gandhari script is a written representation of the Prakrit language family, further research is now being carried out to glean the extent of changes brought about in the interpretation of early Buddhist literature due to oral translation methods prevalent in the far-east.It was a long held belief that all the significant works of Buddhist literature were in Pali. With the discovery of the 2nd century A.D. manuscript now known as the Gandhari Dharmapada, near modern Hadda in Afghanistan, this belief took a serious jolt. The Gandhari manuscripts, which were donated to the British Library in 1994, are now acknowledged as the oldest surviving Buddhist documents. The realization that the Kharoshthi/Gandhari script is a written representation of the Prakrit language family, further research is now being carried out to glean the extent of changes brought about in the interpretation of early Buddhist literature due to oral translation methods prevalent in the far-east. |
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Kharoshthi and Brahmi By virtue of being contemporary writing systems, Kharoshthi and Brahmi have often come under comparison with each other. Both Brahmi and Kharoshthi have the concept of a consonant followed by a short vowel to denote a change in sound. This concept has survived in a number of modern Indian languages in the form of a matraa. There are also other similarities like the placing of consonants together to make a composite ligature in certain instances.
A major difference between the two is that while Brahmi had different characters for long and short vowels, Kharoshthi used the same marks for both. After the decline of Kharoshthi as a script, Brahmi and its descendants became widely popular throughout the Indian subcontinent. |
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Reviving Kharoshthi As mentioned before, the Kharoshthi script was deciphered by James Prinsep and others around the middle of the 19th century. The first definitive study of Kharoshthi was published by Buhler in 1904. For the next half-century or so, this study remained the standard for all study of Kharoshthi. After the discovery of the Gandharan manuscripts, there has been a renewed interest in the study of Kharoshthi paleography. Other manuscripts have been found in the Bamiyan and Kucha regions. The language has come under scrutiny as being one of the oldest languages of the subcontinent and also as the language of the earliest Buddhist texts. Analysis of these documents has led scholars to a number of interesting insights into the growth Buddhism as a religion as well as the general history of the Gandhara region.
Kharoshthi has now been encoded in the Unicode standard, wherein it occupies the 65-character block from U+10A00 to U+10A5F. A number of Unicode fonts have also been developed for Kharoshthi, such as ALPHABETUM Unicode and MPH 2B Damase.
The Unicode avatar of Kharoshthi uses Unicode Bi-directional Algorithm in much the same way as Arabic and Hebrew, with the exception being that in Kharoshthi, both letters and numerals are written from right to left.
The encoding of ancient languages into the computer enables researchers and scholars to better analyze and understand the language as well as the script. This is also of great help in deciphering of the ancient writings. |
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Conclusion The Kharoshthi script and the Gandhari language together represent almost 600 years of the history of the Indian subcontinent.
The renewed interest in the analysis of these almost forgotten fragments of our past has already led to a number of insights into the origin of writing and documentation. Yet, many revelations about the glorious history of a rich and once-flourishing culture still lie un-deciphered, waiting for the day when they can tell their tale. |
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