The task of our research is to understand by what principle the letters of the Devanagari alphabet are arranged. And also an attempt to analyze the probable origin of this writing.
Let's start with the literal translation of the word "Devanagari" into Russian.
"Virgo " - divine, (related words "wondrous", "amazing")
"Naga " - Nagas (mythical people of serpent people) who lived, according to legend, in India in ancient times. Nagas could be gods, demigods, or confidants of gods.
"Ri " - (the same root word speech) speech, writing, law, order, ritual.
In total we get "Deva-Naga-Ri" - Divine Nagas letter (or speech).
It's funny, isn't it? Nagas are a people considered a mythical fiction, and their writing is a completely material object that has existed for about 4000 years.
And this despite the fact that in the legends of the ancient Indians, many other mythical races are mentioned: Rakshasas, Rudras, Devas, intelligent monkeys, etc. … And the Nagas are only one of these peoples.
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However, the letter for the sake of which the Aryans who came to India abandoned even their Brahmi alphabet is attributed to them, the nagas. I would like to note that a large nation should have had a very good reason to abandon its own alphabet.
The Aryans, according to what they write in the history books, were more culturally developed than the local Dravidian population. The Aryans did not accept the Dravidians into their castes and varnas, considering them outcast, untouchable, that is, a lower social class.
And what if the more cultured winners abandon their own alphabet in order to accept the writing of the lower class? Something does not add up here.
It would be like if the Russian Empire, after the conquest of Buryatia or Central Asia, abolished the Cyrillic alphabet and introduced the Arabic or Tibetan script. Or if the French, having mastered Indochina, would suddenly abandon the Latin alphabet and adopt the Vietnamese alphabet. Nonsense and more!
I will repeat once again that some very serious reason is needed to change the writing.
Suppose that the Devanagari alphabet was really used by a real rather highly developed people of the Nagas, completely extinct (disappeared) in ancient times.
Then everything converges (except for the conquests of the Aryans. Perhaps it was a peaceful resettlement of the people). The Aryans came and faced a culture that was an order of magnitude or two superior in development. It is clear that they wanted to learn how to read the literature of the Nagas (as Europeans once studied Latin for the sake of reading their ancient authors), and then they adopted Devanagari as a commonly used international letter.
Yes, besides, by that time Brahmi's letter was distorted beyond recognition, turning simply into a set of incomprehensible symbols, each of which had to be memorized without understanding its meaning (see my work on the Cyrillic alphabets).
It will be appropriate to recall the following remarkable facts here. In India, to this day, the strange custom of cutting the base of the tongue is widespread. Many yogis stretch their tongue lengthwise with special training (sometimes even very strongly). There have been preserved references to the incision by the Brahmans in ancient times of the tongue along the length so that it resembles a serpentine.
Why such seemingly very artificial operations?
This, of course, is just a hypothesis, but is it not with that completely pragmatic, rational goal to make it easier to speak the language of the Nagas?
The structure of the letters of Devanagari. The basic principle
Suppose that, as in the case of the Cyrillic group of alphabets, each Devanagari character is a schematic representation of the mouth and organs of speech at the time of uttering a sound.
The symbolism in this case will be somewhat different than in the proto-Cyrillic alphabet. We will not find any conventions for touches and obstacles in Devanagari.
Here is a picture and only a picture. Like a schematic side view of the mouth.
The upper palate is a horizontal line, the lower jaw is vertical. The mouth is always open and looks to the right and down.
In Devanagari, teeth are never depicted. Never ever. Not a single symbol!
What does not fit into theory
I could not imagine how almost half of the letters of Devanagari are pronounced. Either they were greatly distorted over time, or they depict the position of the mouth of a non-human being, or something else …
These letters are:
Conclusion
The conclusion is the place in the text
in which the author is tired of thinking
(I don't remember who said that)
So, we see the alphabet, with a fair degree of probability, built on a pragmatic principle.
Moreover, this alphabet was created in ancient times.
1. This alphabet is easy to learn and memorize
2. You can come up with the desired letter yourself, and all readers will understand it
3. Unlike all other human languages, the language of the creators of Devanagari did not contain ANY dental letter. It can be assumed that these creatures did not have teeth at all. This is how Indian sculptures depict the nagas. Nagas have only 2 sharp, long canines on the lower and upper jaw. It is clear that it is almost impossible to pronounce any sounds from these fangs.
4. To pronounce some of the sounds of the language of the creators of Devanagari, a very long tongue is required. Judging by some of the letters, it may be forked at the end.
5. There are many sounds in the tongue, with exhalation through the nose, not through the mouth. For other human languages, this phenomenon is extremely rare. Why complicate things so much when our mouth and lips allow a huge amount of different pronunciation variations? Moreover, in classical Sanskrit, these very "exhalation" sounds are also pronounced as through the mouth, but with aspiration. It seems that the creators of the language did not have such a mobile mouth, but the nasopharynx was overdeveloped.
Final assumptions
1. The Devanagari alphabet was created by the highly developed civilization of the Nagas.
2. The nagas, most likely, were not earthlings, but, say, an ethnographic expedition from another planet.
3. The Devanagari alphabet, very likely built on a picture principle, depicts the mouth of the Naga at the time of uttering a sound.
4. People tried to speak correctly in the language of the Nagas, and for this purpose they changed their organs of speech.
5. The Proto-Cyrillic alphabet by the time of its creation is distant from the moment of the arrival of the Aryans in India, most likely by 1000 years. Such a large number of errors in it, which led to the loss of understanding of its meaning, could have accumulated in about such a time. I do not insist on the accuracy of this figure, it can be 10 times more, and 2 times less.
6. The Aryans came to India, most likely, peacefully, and not by military means. They could not have been able to fight a civilization that exceeded them in development by an order of magnitude. And the Arians clearly came before the Nagas disappeared from this country. Otherwise, they would not have adopted the alphabet alien to them. Perhaps the Vedic descriptions of the Aryan wars are a summary of later historical events.
7. The lack of changes in the Aryan language may indicate exactly the opposite. That they came to India just after the disappearance of the Nagas from it. And they adopted the alphabet as part of the high culture left from the Nagas.
D. A. KAMENEV