Lipi means 'writing, letters, alphabet' both in Sanskrit and Pali, and contextually refers to scripts, the art or manner of writing, or in modified form such as lipī to painting, decorating or anointing a surface to express something.
The term lipi appears in multiple texts of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, some of which have been dated to the 1st millennium BCE in ancient India. Section 3.2.21 of Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī (around 500 BCE), mentions lipi in the context of writing. However, Panini does not describe or name a Sanskrit script. The Arthashastra (200 BCE – 300 CE), in section 1.2–5, asserts that lipi was a part of the education system in ancient India.
According to Buddhist texts such as Lalitavistara Sūtra, young Siddhartha — the future Buddha — mastered philology and scripts at a school from Brahmin Lipikara and Deva Vidyasinha.Lopon Nado (1982), The Development of Language in Bhutan, The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, Volume 5, Number 2, page 95, Quote: "Under different teachers, such as the Brahmin Lipikara and Deva Vidyasinha, he mastered Indian philology and scripts. According to Lalitavistara, there were as many as sixty-four scripts in India." These texts list the lipi that the Buddha of ancient India knew as a child, and the list contains sixty-four scripts, though Salomon states that "the historical value of this list is however limited by several factors". A version of this list of sixty-four ancient Indian scripts is found in the Chinese translation of an Indian Buddhist text, and this translation has been dated to 308 CE.
The canonical texts of Jainism list eighteen lipi, with many names of writing scripts that do not appear in the Buddhist list of sixty-four lipi. The Jaina list of writing scripts in ancient India, states Buhler, is likely "far older" than the Buddhist list.
Terminology Lipi means 'script, writing, alphabet' both in Sanskrit and Pali. A lipika or lipikara means 'scribe' or 'one who writes', while lipijnana and lekhā means the 'science or art of writing'. Related terms such as lekhā (, related to rekhā 'line') and likh () are found in VedicMaurice Bloomfield (2014, 2nd edition: 1964), A Vedic Concordance, Harvard University Press, , page 832, Bloomfield mentions several mentions of Lekha in Vedic texts, e.g. section 1.5.3 of the Taittiriya Samhita. and post-Vedic Sanskrit texts of Hinduism, as well as in regional languages such as the Pali texts of Buddhism.
A term lip () appears in verse 4.4.23 of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, verse 5.10.10 Chandogya Upanishad, verse 2 in Isha Upanishad and verse 5.11 in Katha Upanishad.GA Jacob (1963), Upanishad Vakya Kosha – A Concordance of the Principal Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita, Motilal Banarsidass, page 802 It means 'smear, stain'.Monier Monier Williams, Lip, Sanskrit-English Dictionary with Etymology, Oxford University Press, page 902 These are the early Upanishads and a part of Vedic literature of Hinduism.
According to section 4.119 of the Unadisutras as now received, lipi is derived from the Sanskrit root lip. The Unadisutras themselves certainly existed before the time of Pāṇini,, Quote: "Such a list [rules of Unadisutras] existed from before the time of Panini, since he twice refers to it". instances of later interpolations have been raised by Max Müller, although Müller does not discuss whether the sutra related to lipi was interpolated.; Salomon in 1995 remarked "The external testimony from literary and other sources on the use of writing in pre-Ashokan India is vague and inconclusive. Alleged evidence of pre-Mauryan writing has in the past been found by various scholars in such sources as later Vedic literature, the Pali canon, the early Sanskrit grammatical treatises of Pāṇini's and his successors, and the works of European classical historians. But all of these references are subject in varying degrees to chronological or interpretive problems."
The Edicts of Ashoka (circa 250 BCE) use the word lipī. According to some authors, the word lipi, which is spelled dipi in the two Kharosthi versions of the rock edicts, comes from the Old Persian prototype dipi (𐎮𐎡𐎱𐎡), which also means 'inscription', which is for instance used by Darius I in his Behistun inscription. Old Persian dipi in turn is a loanword from Sumerian dup. E. Hultzsch, an epigraphist in the colonial British Empire, in his 1925 study on the Inscriptions of Asoka, considered the lip derivation untenable because of the two Kharosthi rock edict inscriptions from 3rd century BCE which use dipi instead of lipi. Hultzsch, as well as Sharma, state that this suggests a borrowing and diffusion of lipi from an Old Persian prototype dipi."The word dipi appears in the Old Persian inscription of Darius I at Behistan (Column IV. 39) having the meaning inscription or "written document" in
Chronology Some Indian traditions credit Brahma with inventing lipi, the scripts for writing.Jao Tsung-i (1964), CHINESE SOURCES ON BRĀHMĪ AND KHAROṢṬHĪ, Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 45, No. 1/4 (1964), pages 39–47 Scholars such as Lallanji Gopal claim some ancient lipi such as the Brahmi script as used in the Indian texts, may have originated in Jainism.Lallanji Gopal (1978), DID BRĀHMĪ SCRIPT ORIGINATE WITH THE JAINS?, Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 58/59, pages 711–726
"Lipi" in the Edicts of Ashoka
According to Harry Falk, scripts and the idea of writing can be traced to the Indus Valley civilization in the 3rd millennium BCE, but the term lipi in 1st millennium BCE Indian literature may be a loan word from the Achaemenid Empire, as a variant of Sumerian dub, turned to dipi or dipī. Sanskrit lipi, states Falk, likely arose from a combination of foreign influences and indigenous inventions. One evidence in favor of this view is that the form dipi was used in some of the Kharosthi-script edicts of Ashoka (3rd century BCE) in northwest India (in closest contact to Achaemenid culture) in parallel to lipi in other regions. As dipi was used in Old Persian Achaemenid inscriptions, Hultzsch suggested in 1925 that this proposal is "irresistible." In his theory about the origin of the Brahmi script, Falk states that the early mention by Paṇini could mean that he was aware of writing scripts in West Asia around 500 BCE, and the Paṇini's mention of lipikara may possibly refer to non-Indian writers such as Aramaic scribes.
"Lipi" in Paṇini Falk states that the single isolated mention of lipi by Paṇini, could mean that he was only aware of writing scripts from West Asia around 500 BCE. According to Paul Griffiths, there is "no hard evidence of the use of Brahmi or Kharosthi script" in India before the Ashoka stone inscription, but the climate of India is such as that writing on other materials would not have survived for over 2,500 years. So, states Griffith, "the absence of early witnesses certainly doesn't mean there were none", but there is no "clear textual evidence of the use of writing in the Vedic corpus".
Opinions on origination Kenneth Norman (a professor and the president of the Pali Text Society) suggests lipi in ancient India evolved over the long period of time like other cultures, that it is unlikely that a lipi was devised as a single complete writing system at one and the same time in the Maurya era. Norman suggests that it is even less likely that Brāhmī was invented during Ashoka's rule, starting from nothing, for the specific purpose of writing his inscriptions and understood all over South Asia. Reviewing the recent archaeological discoveries relating to writing scripts in South Asia particularly Buddhism, Norman writes, "Support for this idea of pre-Ashoka development [of writing scripts] has been given very recently by the discovery of sherds at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, inscribed with small numbers of characters which seem to be Brahmi. These sherds have been dated, by both carbon 14 and thermo-luminescence dating, to pre-Ashokan times, perhaps as much as two centuries before Ashoka".
Jack Goody similarly suggests that ancient India likely had a "very old culture of writing" along with its oral tradition of composing and transmitting knowledge, because the Vedic literature is too vast, consistent and complex to have been entirely created, memorized, accurately preserved and spread without a written system. Walter Ong and John Hartley concur with Goody and share the same concerns about the theory that there may not have been any writing scripts during the Vedic age, given the quantity and quality of the Vedic literature.
Falk disagrees with Goody, and suggests that it is a Western presumption and inability to imagine remarkably early scientific achievements such as Panini's grammar (5th to 4th century BCE), and the creation, preservation and wide distribution of the large corpus of the Brahmanic Vedic literature and the Buddhist canonical literature, without any writing scripts. Johannes Bronkhorst (professor of Sanskrit and Indian studies) acknowledges that Falk is widely regarded as the definitive study on this subject, but disagrees and states, "Falk goes too far. It is fair to expect that we believe that Vedic memorisation — though without parallel in any other human society — has been able to preserve very long texts for many centuries without losing a syllable. (...) However, the oral composition of a work as complex as Pāṇini’s grammar is not only without parallel in other human cultures, it is without parallel in India itself. (...) It just will not do to state that our difficulty in conceiving any such thing is our problem".Johannes Bronkhorst (2002), Literacy and Rationality in Ancient India, Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques, 56(4), pages 803–804, 797–831.
Richard Salomon, in a 1995 review, states that the lack of securely datable specimens of writing from pre-3rd century BCE period, coupled with chronological and interpretive problems of more ancient Indian texts, has made dating lipi and who influenced whom a controversial problem.
Ancient Indian scripts While historical evidence of scripts is found in the Indus Valley civilization relics, these remain undeciphered. There has been a lack of similar historical evidence from the 2nd and early 1st millennium BCE, until the time of Ashoka where the 3rd-century BCE pillar edicts evidence the Brahmi script. Late 20th-century archaeological studies combined with carbon dating techniques at Ujjain and other sites suggest that Brahmi script existed on the ancient Indian subcontinent as early as 450 BCE.
Sri Lankan texts and inscriptions suggest that written script were in extensive use in ancient India, and had arrived in Sri Lanka by about 3rd century BCE.The Origin of the Art of Writing in India and the Sri Lankan Experience Ariya Lagamuwa (2009), Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, page 2, Quote: "The drushtivada of Jains mentioned that Brahmi alphabet has 46 basic characters. Hiuen Tsiang states that the Brahmi alphabet remains intact over the generations and it has 47 characters. (...) According to their historical evidences, it is clear that the Indian alphabets including Brahmi have been widespread during the 3rd century BC". While scholars agree that developed writing scripts existed and were in use by the second half of the 1st millennium BCE, the chronology and the origins of lipi in ancient India remain a controversial, difficult and unresolved scholarly topic.
Indian and Chinese Buddhist texts