Writing Matters Scripts of India 03 26 2026

Hello, welcome to Writing Matters. I'm Dr. Gabriela Vlahovic-Jones.

And my name is Navea Tigre, and we are excited to continue a series of discussion on the history of writing and writing instruction.

Joining us today are Dr. Archana Gupta and Ms. Ashwati Sen. Dr. Gupta and Ms.

Sen are professors in the Department of English Languages and Media Studies, and today they will talk to us about scripts of India.

So, Dr. Gupta, why do scripts matter today? Scripts have always mattered, and of course in this digital age it matters.

We have to think about it. And script is the foundation of the language.

Whatever we speak, it goes away. But whatever we write, it stays with us.

So whenever we are writing in a script, we are not only communicating, but we are also connecting to the generations gone by.

So, yes, script tells us about our cultures, our history, our identity.

So I think it is important. So how did Indian scripts evolve and what makes them unique?

Before I answer that, I think I should talk about India first.

India is not only a country but also a civilization which is more than a thousand years old.

So in those days, during the Indus Valley civilization, we didn't have any script.

It was only transcriptions on pillars and stones.

So around 3rd century BCE, Brahmi script was evolved.

And through Brahmi script, other scripts came. That is Devanagari, it evolved in the north, right?

And in the east, it was Bengali. And in the south, it was Tamil and Malayalam.

So, yeah, that is how the script evolved for us.

So, Miss Sen, you kindly agreed to talk to us a little bit about Sanskrit.

Can you tell us a little bit about some basic principles of Sanskrit writing? Of course.

So before going to the basic concepts of Sanskrit writing, as we all know, Sanskrit is one of the oldest languages known to humankind.

And it can be traced back to thousands of years. And the first book ever written in the world was in Sanskrit.

It's called Rig Veda. And people

believe because of its rhythmic structure and also because

of its poetic nature that it carries vibrations, which makes it essential for yogic practices and also for philosophy.

talking about the different concepts we have to understand just like Dr.

Ashina was saying Sanskrit is also written in Devanagri which

is this beautiful and intricate script, it carries 47

characters including vowels and consonants and in Sanskrit each sound is a syllable instead of one alphabet

so, and it's precisely phonetic, which means that the words, the script can be written

only in the order of how it sounds in speech. So it makes it practically very easy for the first time learner to pronounce Sanskrit because you are actually pronouncing what exactly you are reading.

And as for the concepts of Sanskrit, on which Sanskrit stands, they are innumerable.

But we can talk about the four basic pillars of Sanskrit, which is Varna, which are Varna, Dhvani, Shabd and Chand.

So, Varna means, how to put it in words,

Varna means letters or phnomes, Dhani

means sound or resonance, and Shabda means words in the speech, and Chanda means rhythm or prosody.

So, these are the four pillars on which Sanskrit, you know, is based off of. Yeah.

What other languages can be connected to the Sanskrit script? Oh, well, there are so many.

So the geological influence of

Sanskrit can be traced back not only to India, but Southeast Asia, countries like Tibet, Korea, China, Japan.

Sanskrit also languages like Greek and Latin find its root in Sanskrit so for example the Greek word

pater meaning father comes from the Sanskrit root which also means father the Greek word

rajam which means basically sounds like regime in English it means king comes from raja in Sanskrit