How did scripts evolve in India?

From the Copper Plates gallery, walk into the adjoining Epigraphy section. You can play this story there.

Which are the oldest languages and scripts in India? Walk along the Epigraphy section and let us go back in time to see how languages and scripts evolved in these parts of India.

In India, and in fact across the whole of south and central Asia, the oldest readable script that we know of is called Brahmi. You can see a Brahmi inscription in the first bay in this corridor. All Indian scripts are said to have evolved from this mother script which was in use around the 3rd century BCE.

At that time, the languages spoken in North India were Prakrit and Sanskrit, while Tamil was the language spoken in these parts. All these languages were WRITTEN in the Brahmi script. Over many centuries, this Brahmi script evolved into the Nagari script in the north. Down south, it evolved into a script called Tamili or Tamil Brahmi, which then evolved into a script called Vatta Ezhuthu, which in turn evolved into the modern-day Tamil script.

But not all scholars agree with this theory. There is another school of thought that says that Tamil Brahmi pre-dates the Brahmi script. As of now, there isn’t enough evidence to conclusively prove either of these theories.

Down south, Sanskrit language had a relatively muted presence until the Pallavas adopted it as their court language. They created a script called the Pallava grantha script to write Sanskrit. Their capital, Kancheepuram became a famous centre for Sanskrit learning. You can see an example of this script in an adjoining bay on a fragment that dates back to the 7th century CE.

So during the Pallava period, both Sanskrit and Tamil were in use in these parts.

Pallava grantha, which was the script for sSanskrit, co-existed with Vatta Ezhuthu, which was a script for Tamil.

While Brahmi is the oldest readable Indian script today, there exists another Indian script, older than Brahmi, which remains undeciphered to this day – the graffiti marks found in the excavations of the Indus Valley Civilisation, some of which may date as far back as 3500 BCE! Till date, no one knows what these marks mean.