Hinduism: What Really Happenned in India (PDF) - Oration

Hinduism: What Really Happened in India – M. M. Ninan
immortalized by freezing them into visible permanent hard copies, which
can be translated to the corresponding thought patterns. In this sense, it
is the Word becoming Flesh. For this reason, almost all early religions
came into existence along with the ability of the people to write. It is not
that there were no religion or philosophies before that, - there sure was -
but there was no continuity of transmission and these were soon
forgotten or corrupted. This was inevitable. Thus, most religious
prophets were told to “cry” and also to “write”.
Whenever writing became common, we can see that there was also an
explosion of religious, philosophical and scientific expression.
Practical writing (and reading) methods were probably widespread
among the Chinese noble class by about 800 BC and in the Middle East
by about 500 BC and Southern Asia by about 200 BC. All sacred texts
before this time were transmitted primarily orally with all its possible
problems of forgetting and corruption. So none of the great Indian
religious texts (Samhitas and Brahmanas) was written down until after
200 BC. When it was written down it was in Vedic language and not in
Sanskrit, because Sanskrit was not in existence at that time, as we shall
see later.
Indian Scripts
The Indian Scripts originated from two early sources – one from the
Semitic Languages and the other from the Aryan (Indo-European)
Languages. The early scripts of Brahmi originated from the Semitic
Languages from the 7 th centaury BC while the Kharosti originated from
the Indo-European Languages about the same time. It is interesting to
note the Sanskrit Script as used today was actually an offshoot of the
Semitic influence rather than Aryan. Certainly, there must have been
mutual influence and interaction during the development. This
interaction between the two major ethnic languages can be traced back to
the Persian invasion of Israel. Ahasaures, also known as Artexerxes was
probably the husband of Queen Esther. From then on, the relation
between the Aryan and the Semitic people were very cordial. This led to
the mutual influence that we see in the script and languages.
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