ABSTRACT
Many Indologists follow Bühl er (1895, 1896) in believing that both Kharosthi and Brahmi were derived from Semitic writing - with Brahmi perhaps based on a Semitic script like the Phoenician, rather than on Aramaic. However, the Indie systems clearly reflected the phonetic sophistication of the ancient Sanskrit grammarians. Whereas the Semitic writing systems had no systematic way of in dicating vowels, the inventors of Brahmi introduced a novel method of transcrib ing consonants and vowels in a precise way. They did not write consonantal and vocalic phonemes as independent letters, as is done in Greek; nor did they write the vowels only with occasional diacritics added to consonant symbols, as is done in many modem Semitic writing systems. Rather, they adopted the strategy of writing each consonant-vowel (CV) syllable as a complex unit, called in San skrit an aksara. The general characteristics of the resulting system continue to be used in the major writing systems of South and Southeast Asia.
