Today we had our first FMP tutorials. I had already started researching into my topic of languages and script. It began with me tracing back the roots of Devanagiri to Brāhmi script which existed 1000 years ago. Brāhmi was used to write during the 3rd century CE, in Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. Brāhmi evolved to Gupta then Nagari and finally Devanagiri. There is much to read here as they were many sister scripts and languages that had come and gone by the time we reached our modern day Hindi. Devanagiri further gave birth to Sarada, Siddham, Gurumukhi, Odia, Proto-Bengali, Proto-Assamese and Tibetan scripts.
It has always been assumed that Brāhmi evolved from Egyptian Hieroglyphs, to Protosinatic scripts to Aramaic alphabet and then Brāhmi. However, I remember studying about Indus Valley in detail during my school and BA as well and it had a strong evidence of a particular language that was spoken there. I am unable to recall the exact connection but I am determined to research and find the missing cues there. South Asian languages have older history as compared to Egyptian hieroglyphs and Protosinatic Scripts. They may have existed in parallel to one another but they evolved independently of each other.
On the left is an image of Indus Valley seals procured from the regions of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. The seals distinctly show pictorial carvings corresponding the firgure illustrated on them. These seals, although undeciphered for their true purpose, were primarily used for purchasing or exchanging items with other villages or people, as part of a barter system. These seals show pictorial similarities to the characters of Brahmi script.
I started reading this book, History of Languages by Steven Rogers Fischer which is about history of languages all over the world. One of the lines in the book goes "It would be absurd to claim someone somewhere uttered the first word and someone else understood." It suggests that language did not being one day, it evolved.
Indian languages belong to the Dravidian family, Brahmi being the mother of all languages in the sub-continent. Panini, a renowned sanskrit scholar wrote a book called Panini Ashtadhyay which was about grammars and rules of sanskrit. The book formed the basis of India's linguistics and grammar. It spoke of Dhvani (utterance) and Sphota (uttered) relationship, emphasising on how South Asian languages are written the way they are spoken. The book wrote of the principles of phonetics that the west understood in the 20th Century. This is why it is said that ancient Indian scholars were obsessed with grammar.
(Source - History of languages)
Tutorials with Lizzie - I discussed my ongoing research with Lizzie and we had a chat about the goal of the project. I discussed the possibility of doing a manifesto on this topic since its quite research based and I intend to make this an informative project for the UK audience. She suggested me to look into the works of - Stefan Sagmeister, Marina Bantjes, Bruce Mau, Dada, Futurist, Sister Kurita, few of designers and artists who have created manifesto's. She also suggested to look into Fiona Banner's work, especially the work done during 1990-2000's. She further asked me to - Establish the need of the project and understand what I want to achieve with this.
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