Languages And Scripts

More scholar-nerdiness to follow (a warning or an enticement)…

Here are a couple great web pages giving simple introductions to language trees and to the evolution of scripts. Neither is exhaustive (of course), and I was sad to see Persian/Farsi omitted from the language tree, but these are very helpful tools for beginners, and some not-so-beginners to get oriented. The whole idea of a “Indo-European” language family is still foreign to many Buddhists. Hopefully we can help with that a bit.

Likewise with scripts. I first learned Sanskrit using the Devanagari script, somehow assuming it was like the Roman or Greek alphabets: really old. Not so, as it turns out. And it wasn’t until this year in China that some kind and friendly travel-mates caught me up on this. It turns out that most of the Sanskrit that flowed north to Tibet and China (and hence Buddhist Texts, since little or no Pali was translated into these languages to my knowledge) would have been in other, earlier scripts…. and even that is a simplification, I’m finding. As with most things, the more you learn, the more you see how much is out there still to be learned.

The Pali Companion

Pali, the language of the Buddhist canonical writings, is the oldest literary Prakrit.

The Language Tree

1. Pali is one of the many vernacular dialects derived from Sanskrit called Prakrits. Prakrits are known to be used since the 3rd century BC (Middle Indo-Aryan period).

2. The development of Indo-Aryan languages is generally divided into three stages as follows: Old Indo-Aryan (3rd century BC and before), Middle Indo-Aryan (from about 3rd century BC) and Modern Indo-Aryan (from about 10th century AD).

3. The Old Indo-Aryan period comprises Vedic Sanskrit (used in Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads) and classical Sanskrit (used in Mahabharata, Ramayana and Puranas). However, contemporary Sanskrit and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (used in Mahayana texts) are later developments during the Middle Indo-Aryan period.

Family	Sub-Family	Branch	Group	Language
Indo-European	Germanic	West Germanic	Anglo-Frisian	English**
			Netherlandic-German	German
	Italic	Latin-Faliscan (Latinian)		Latin*
			Romance	Spanish, Portuguese, French
	Slavic	East Slavic		Russian
	Greek			Greek*
	Indo-Iranian	Indo-Aryan (Indic)	Old Indo-Aryan	Sanskrit*
			Middle Indo-Aryan	Pali*
			Modern Indo-Aryan	Hindi, Bengali, Sinhalese
Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic)	Semitic	North Central		Hebrew*
		South Central		Arabic*
Sino-Tibetan	Chinese (Sinitic)			Mandarin Chinese**
	Tibeto-Burman			Burmese, Tibetan
Japanese				Japanese
Korean				Korean
Austro-Asiatic	Mon-Khmer			Khmer
		Viet-Muong		Vietnamese
Altaic	Mongolian			Mongolian
Tai				Thai, Lao
Austronesian	Malayo-Polynesian	Western Malayo-Polynesian		Malay** (Malaysia, Indonesia)
Dravidian				Tamil**
* Languages used in major religious texts: – Pali: Theravada Tipitaka (Buddhism) – Sanskrit: Vedas (Hinduism), Mahayana Texts (Buddhism) – Hebrew: Old Testament (Judaism, Christianity) – Latin: New Testament (Christianity) – Greek: New Testament (Christianity) – Arabic: Koran (Islam) ** Four official languages of Singapore.

Table 1: A Simplified Tree of World Languages

To learn more about languages, please refer to Article on “Language” (Encarta Encyclopedia) and the Ethnologue at http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/.

The Pali Companion

The uninflected form of a Pali word, without an ending, is called a stem.

The Scripts

1. According to Sri Lanka tradition, the first written Pali Tipitaka was completed in the first century BCE near Matale in Sri Lanka. These texts were probably written in the Brahmi script.

2. The earliest Buddhist texts discovered to-date were Gandhari text written in the Kharosthi script, and found in the Gandhara region of modern day Afghanistan.

3. The Edicts of Asoka, a collection of inscriptions from the Indian emperor Asoka, were written in various languages and scripts, including Magadhi in the Brahmi script, a form of Sanskrit in the Kharosthi script, and even in Greek and Aramaic.

4. Today, the main scripts used for presenting the Pali Tipitaka include Roman, Sinhala, Thai, Burmese, Khmer, Lao, Tai (in Yunnan, China) and more recently Devanagari.

England ¹	Scripts								China ¹
Prehistoric Britain	1050 BCE – Phoenician alphabet		Indus ² script or Aramaic script ???						1050 BCE – Oracle Bone script 甲骨文; also Bronze script 金文
	9th century BCE – Greek alphabet	8th century BCE – Aramaic alphabet
	8th century BCE – Cumae alphabet								8th century BCE – Seal script 篆书
	7th century BCE – Latin/Roman alphabet
		4th century BCE – Kharo.s.thii script	6th century BCE (?) – Braahmii script
			North ³		South ³				3rd century BCE – Clerical script 隶书	Traditional Chinese 繁体字 ⁵
Roman Britain			400 CE – Gupta script			Pallava script ??	Mon script		200 CE – Regular script 楷书
5th century CE – Futhorc (Runic) alphabet [Old English]			750 CE – Naagarii script	600 CE – Siddha.m script	700 CE – Sinhala script	6th century CE – Grantha script
7th century CE – English alphabet [Modern English]				650 CE – Tibetan script		600 CE – Khmer script ⁴
			1200 CE – Devanaagarii script			1283 CE – Thai script ⁴	1050 CE – Burmese script
						1350 CE – Lao script ⁴		1300 CE – Lanna script
										1900s – Simplified Chinese 简体字 ⁵
Notes: 1. Writing systems in England and China used for illustration. 2. See Wikipedia article on the Indus Script for comprehensive discussion. 3. Indicative, see Wikipedia article on Brahmi Script for details. 4. The Khmer, Thai and Lao scripts are currently used in Cambodia, Thailand and Laos respectively. 5. Both Traditional and Simplified forms of written Chinese are in widespread use today. 6. Scripts mentioned in the main text are highlighted with a light color shade.

Table 1: Historical Development of Writing Scripts

To learn more about scripts, please refer to Wikipedia article on Writing Systems and Ancient Scripts website.

10 May 2009

Languages and Scripts