The earliest versions of Brahmi travel back 12000 to 15000 years in time. As per Georg Buhler’s writings of Narada Smriti and Brihaspati Samhita, the cave paintings of Badami were created in the 6th century AD, and even then, God Brahma’s palm leaf had writings that resembled the alphabets of Brahmi script. But over this period to date, Brahmi words have been replaced by a few illegible lines in Brahma’s palm leaf.
Language is always the truest symbol of a culture it beholds. Every language is capably depicting that particular culture’s efficiency and capabilities. When we say this, we also mean any language is capable of creating a civilization’s powers. Having said this, we will admit, Brahmi was more complete as a language. It will mean Brahmi words resonate better with the universe than do our words.
Brahmi is an Abugida script. Here the basic consonants are its basic characters, and the vowels follow it. But then there are diacritic vowels [a sign above or below a letter that indicates a difference in pronunciation].
The reason why such a language became extinct is what Snehashree truly finds interesting. In her research [published in CASIRJ] and Paripex journals on Brahmi’s existence, she pondered more about it. It is widely agreed upon by many historians and archaeologists that Brahmi went through a huge period of transformation. According to the author, a part of it was in a bid to hide its real powers from humanity as humans became more and more self-centered.
According to her, Swastika, the eternal symbol, ever existing within a few cultures to date, is not just a symbol but a Brahmi word we carry ahead. What we know about the language from Ashoka’s edicts is very different from the Brahmi script that first appeared.
Interestingly, Swastika is also part of the old European, the Neolithic Danube civilization, Cucuteni-Trypillia, and even the Vinca culture. The question that also draws the author’s interest lies in the symbol’s widespread geographical distribution. Why would a symbol lie around with us forever, and we would merely disregard it, thereby limiting its abilities? In this case, it would also be one of the earliest known symbols.
For Snehashree, Swastika is a combination of 8 alphabets of the modern Brahmi. The Brahmi alphabets loosely translate and resemble the Hindi alphabets from the Devanagari script. But what word it forms or how it was pronounced is where the author feels the true magic lies. The word it forms in Hindi is not the absolute word from the time when it was designed. She feels if we knew the right word for it and how it was pronounced then, we would know the way out of this world.
Basically, she is hopeful that if we really knew how to pronounce it, that could open the door to the universe – the one we don’t know exists. According to the author, the key to opening the world to us is this Swastika, a word in Brahmi. It is this very reason why we are carrying it ahead with us from one generation to another.
In the earliest Greco-Roman assemblages, meandering key patterns of Swastika were depicted towards the creation of a maze. If we are to believe in the power of the Greeks and the Romans, we are also to believe that they might have known the way out of the maze using Swastika as the key.
Also, if you look at the formation of the word, it highlights the script’s Boustrophedon [one line can be written from left to right while the next from right to left] structure. It probably indicates the co-existence of the levo-rotatory and the dextro-rotatory worlds in perfect unison.
She is also hopeful that the universe we see or observe with our limited abilities is a locked dimension. The true strength of this world and of humanity would lie in unifying our dimensional part with that of the ‘Unified Verse – Universe.’ Truly, the beginning of it would lie in finding out what Swastika means or how it’s pronounced.
About Snehashree:
Snehashree is the author of two books, “A Hiatus from the Loaded Past” and “The Five Lotuses and the Morass.” She is currently creating a mythical tale of truth that will open the doors of understanding for many and for their good. At other times, when she is not working to support herself, she believes in caring for what little she is capable of. You can find her more frequently on her Instagram handle, @Sne8798 and on her websites.
ThePrint BrandStand content is a paid-for, sponsored article. Journalists of ThePrint are not involved in reporting or writing it.