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Shyamji Krishnavarma, Oriental Lecturer of Balliol College, Oxford, in
the paper he read before the International Congress of Orientalists at
Leyden in 1883, which he attended as the delegate of the Government of
India, has dealt with the subject in a masterly way, and shown that the
art of writing has been in use in India since the Vedic times.
He says: “I feel no hesitation in saying that there are words and
phrases occurring in the Samhitas of the Vedas, in the Brahmanas and in
the Sutra works, which leave no doubt as to the use of the written
characters in ancient India. It may be confidently asserted that the
systematic treatises in prose which abounded at and long before Panini
could never have been composed without the help of writing. We know for
certain that with the exception of the hymns of the Rig Veda, most of
the Vedic works are in prose, and it is difficult to understand how they
could possibly have been composed without having recourse to some
artificial means.”
Katyayana says: “When the writer and the witnesses are dead.” Yagyavalka
mentions written documents; and Narada and others also bear testimony to
their existence.
Even Max Muller himself is compelled to admit that “writing was known to
the authors of the Sutras.”
The supposition that writing was unknown in India before 350 B.C. is
only one of the many instances calculated to show the strange
waywardness of human intellect.
Har Bilas Sarda a member of the Royal Asiatic Society and author of
Hindu Superiority has written: “The extraordinary vocal powers of the
Hindus, combined with their wonderful inventive genius, produced a
language which, when fully developed, was commensurate with their
marvelous intellectual faculties, and which contributed materially in
the creation of a literature unparalleled for richness, sublimity and
range. The peculiar beauties inherent in the offspring of such high
intellectual powers are greatly enhanced by its scientific up-bringing
and by constant and assiduous exercise it has developed into what is now
such a model of perfection as to well-deserve the name of deo-bani, or
“the language of the gods.” The very excellence of the language and the
scientific character of its structure have led some good people to doubt
if this polished and learned language could ever have been the
vernacular of any people.
(source: Hindu Superiority - By Har Bilas Sarda p. 215-217). |
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