From: Antoine Leca (Antoine10646@leca-marti.org)
Date: Tue Apr 05 2005 - 10:09:02 CST
On Sunday, April 3rd, 2005 13:42Z Sinnathurai Srivas va escriure:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
> To: "Unicode Discussion" <unicode@unicode.org>
> Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 12:35 PM
> Subject: Re: Tamil Aytham
>
>
>> At 10:28 +0100 2005-04-03, Sinnathurai Srivas wrote:
>>
>>> Your openion on this matter sounds speculative.
You know this speculation is widely shared.
>> My opinion on this matter is based on the known history of Brahmic
>> writing.
>>
>>> Tamil and Sinthu (Sindu) writing system had very close
>>> relationship in ancient Indian history. No such things as Grantha
>>> nor Sanskrit existed at that time.
>>
>> The Tamil script did not predate Tamil Grantha.
>>
> Tamil existed as a natural language, before Grantha was artificially
> created.
Grantha is a language?
I always understood it was a script.
Then, if you want to write that the Tamil language existed long before the
Grantha script was designed, then we are in agreement (I believe almost
everybody will.) BTW, it is not a special situation: a number of languages
did exist before the scripts.
> Tamil script existed (not as we use it now) before Grantha was
> started.
But it looks like Grantha (or other "Brahmic" influences that predate it)
does have a great influence upon the present Tamil script.
>> The Brahmic scripts do not derive from the Indus script, if this
>> is what you mean by Harappan.
>
> Yes Bramic also drives from Indis script. I'll put together some
> evidence later and post it.
You know the scientific community is _not_ in general agreement with you,
don't you?
This is not to say that you are wrong: contrary to Kharoshti where we have
good presumptions the script derives from Mesopotamia or European earlier
scripts, it is not completely clear what the roots for Brahmi are (at least
to me.)
Of course, the European point of view here is generally European-centric (or
used to be.) I do not know for sure, but I would guess that by the same way
the Indian point of view might be Indian biased. Nothing is wrong here.
Scientifics are rational persons (politicians are not), so when correct
evidence is given they are happy to change their minds to help building a
more stable theory. For example, the "explanations" that dates Rg-Veda backs
to 1200 BCE (according to the Biblic date for the Deluge, around 1500 BCE)
is now widely seen as wrong, at least about the timeframe. There is no
general agreement (as I see) right now for the "correct" date, but the
majority agrees the text is older.
Antoine
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