Page:A Record of the Buddhist Religion as practised in India and the Malay Archipelago.djvu/17

 Although Professor Boehtlingk maintains that writing, at least for monumental purposes, was known in India before the third century, he has produced no dated inscription to support his assertion, still less has he proved that this non-existent alphabet was called Yavanânî. We cannot deny the possibility that a knowledge of alphabetic writing may have reached India before the time of Alexander; nor need Yavanânî have meant Ionian or Greek. No one has ever held that any one of the Indian alphabets was derived direct from the Greek letters such as they were at the time of Alexander. No writer of any authority has derived these Indian alphabets from any but a Semitic or Aramaic source. Even Semitic (Phenician) inscriptions before that of Eshmunezar at the end of the fifth century B. C. (fourth century, according to Maspero) are very scarce. I only know of that of Siloam about 700 B.C., and that of Mesha about gco B.C. Professor Weber's argument cannot therefore be brushed away by a mere assertion.

Still less could any scholar say that the existence of the ancient Vedic literature was impossible or inconceivable without a knowledge of alphabetic writing. Where the art of alphabetic writing is known and practised for literary purposes, no person on earth could conceal the fact, and I still challenge any scholar to produce any mention of writing in Indian literature before the supposed age of Pânini. To say that literature is impossible without alphabetic writing shows a want of acquaintance with Greek, Hebrew, Finnish, Estonian, Mordvinian, nay with Mexican literature. Why should all names for writing, paper, ink, stylus, letters, or books have been so carefully avoided if they had been in daily use? Besides, it is well known that the interval between the use of alphabetic writing for official or monumental purposes and its use for literature is very wide. Demand only creates supply, and a written literature would presuppose a reading public such as no one has yet claimed for the time of Homer, of Moses, of the authors of the Kalevala, of Kalevipoeg or of the popular and religious songs of Ugro-Finnish or