Hi everyone,
Recently I have had chance to discuss about oldest language in India with some of my friends from different linguistic backgrounds in India. Other than Thamizh (Tamil) people, everyone had the same idea, as Sanskrit is the oldest language in India. I begged to differ, as any other Tamil person would.
However, they started providing knowledge transfer as to why Sanskrit is the oldest language and underlined that Tamil Brahmi came from Ashoka's Brahmi after Sanskrit.
So, I decided to learn about different writings, ancient civilizations, the way of writing etc. Still I am very much convinced that Thamizh indeed is the oldest language in India. If you are interested in my journey, please join me in this blog.
Ok, lets start with Time line, that would clear away many of the doubts from the reader's minds. Our earth's timeline is divided in to BCE and CE, that is, Before Common Era and Common Era. If you don't understand this, you can call it BC and AD.
Important thing about this timeline is, BCE or BC is counted in the reverse direction as we do not know exactly how many years ago the History began. From 7th century onwards people came up with the idea of counting the years in ascending order keeping the birth of Jesus Christ (0th Century AD) as the center.
1 year before the birth of Jesus Christ would be 1 BC, 2 years before Jesus' birth would be 2 BC and so on. So, there was a debate on why history should be based on Jesus Christ when there were saints like Buddha lived long before him. So, they started calling BC as BCE and AD as CE.
Alright, now let's come to our research. The very first found inscriptions in India are the Ashoka inscriptions. Ashoka was the King who lived between 262 to 232 BC, roughly in the 2nd century BC. They named the letters in the inscription as Ashoka Brahmi. Later they found inscriptions in different parts of India. The inscriptions found in Tamil Nadu had similarities with Ashoka Brahmi, but were very simple and had lesser number of vowels. Ashoka Brahmi had 9 vowels whereas Tamil Brahmi had only 8 vowels.
The Ashoka inscriptions were found from 3rd Century BC to 1st Century BC. Now from the Keezhadi excavations we have found Tamil letters from 6th Century BC.
So, tell me, will you call yourself with your grandson's name. If you are NTR your grandson can be Junior NTR and not vice versa. Similarly, we have found older inscriptions from Tamil Nadu, and these letters should not be called with something younger than that.
Another point is, vowels in Tamil were lesser when compared to Ashoka Brahmi. When the civilization grows, the earliest would always have simple letters and as it grows more new letters would be added.
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