1. Tibetan Alphabet

The Tibetan language is among the richest and oldest languages in the world. The language served as the repository of the ancient Tibetan knowledge and Himalayan culture. It was widely used not only in Tibet but in most of the areas along the Himalayan belt, from Balti and Swat regions of India and Pakistan, to northern regions of Nepal, Ladakh, Arunachal and Sikkim in India, and in Bhutan. Rich and profound teachings of the ancient Bon and Buddhist religions, philosophy and science are well encapsulated in the folios of ancient Tibetan texts and scriptures. While the history of Tibetan civilization dates back to the time beyond BC era, the origin of the Tibetan script and writing system was said to be around the mid seventh century CE only. As language and literacy are fundamental to any civilization, it would imply that there was no proper civilization in Tibet before the seventh century. This research will attempt to present the general scholars‘views on the subject and the contradictions. It will explore other Tibetan sources and views which were not widely and openly discussed, but are revelatory in that Tibet had a writing system since ancient times.

Tibetan phonemes have thirty consonants [Tib:gSal byed]^[1] and four vowels [Tib:dByangs]^[2]. Based on the pronunciation pitch [inflection], the scripts are divided into male, female, neuter and so on. A single consonant may make proper meaning, but a proper word is formed usually with the combination of five prefix [sNgon 'jug]^[3], ten suffix [rJes 'jug]^[4] and post suffix [Yang 'jug]^[5], with or without vowels. It has three groups of mGo can [capping from above] as Ra mgo^[6], La mgo^[7] and Sa mgo^[8] forming cascading scripts; and another three groups of 'Dog yig [attachment from below], Ya rtags^[9], La rtags^[10] and Ra tags.^[11] and rTseg yig, combination of the two.

Below is a sample of Tibetan scripts:

ཀ་ ཁ་ ག་ ང་། ཅ་ ཆ་ ཇ་ ཉ། ཏ་ ཐ་ ད་ ན། པ་ ཕ་ བ་ མ། ཙ་ ཚ་ ཛ་ ཝ། ཞ་ ཟ་ འ་ ཡ། ར་ ལ་ ཤ་ ས། ཧ་ ཨ།

རྐ་ རྒ་ རྔ་ རྗ་ རྙ་ རྟ་ རྡ་ རྣ་ རྤ་ རྦ་ རྨ་ རྫ། ལྐ་ ལྒ་ ལྔ་ ལྕ་ ལྗ་ ལྟ་ ལྡ་ ལྤ་ ལྦ། སྐ་ སྒ་ སྔ་ སྙ་ སྟ་ སྡ་ སྣ་ སྤ་ སྦ་ སྨ་ སྩ། ཀྱ་ ཁྱ་ གྱ་ པྱ་ ཕྱ་ བྱ་ མྱ། ཀྲ་ ཁྲ་ གྲ་ ཏྲ་ ཐྲ་ དྲ་ ནྲ་ པྲ་ ཕྲ་ བྲ་ མྲ་ སྲ་ ཧྲ། ཀླ་ གླ་ བླ་ ཟླ་ རླ་ སླ། རྐྱ་ རྒྱ་ སྐྱ་ སྒྱ་ སྤྱ་ སྨྱ། རྐྲ་ ར་ སྐྲ་ སྒྲ་ སྤྲ་ སྨྲ། ྒྲ

Fine combination of these syllables with vowels has made the written expression in the Tibetan language rich, eloquent and beautiful. The Tibetan epic poem, King Gesar of Ling [Tib:gLing ge sar gyal po'i sdrung] is believed to be the longest written epic poem with a hundred and twenty volumes in more than one million lines and more than twenty million words. The Indian mythological epic, Mahabharata, and Japanese Genji Monogatari by Murasaki Shikibi comes next to this Tibetan epic in terms of volumes. The richness of the language could be understood from the fact that it has 108 connotative words for 'sun' [nyima]^[12] and 36 for 'moon' [dawa]^[13].

The biography of Tonpa Shenrab, the founder of Yungdrung [Tib:g.Yung drung] Bon religion of Tibet, could be found in three different lengths: mDo 'dus, the shortest version, gZer mig, the middle version, and mDo Dri med gzi brjid, the longest one in twelve volumes. bKa' 'gyur [read Kagyur] and bsTan 'gyur [read Tengyur], the two ancient Tibetan Buddhist canons, are supposed to be the most comprehensive and authoritative works on the teachings of Buddha and its commentaries. The words of Buddha, or the direct teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni, are recorded in bKa' 'gyur texts in hundred and four or eight volumes^[14]; and bsTan 'gyur texts with two hundred and eighteen volumes with 3626 commentary texts on Buddha's teachings^[15]. It is also believed that on a per capita basis, the books written in Tibet are the highest. The country had produced large Buddhist, Bon and lay literatures, despite its sparse population of around six million, with 2.5 million square kilometers of land. There are many Tibetan scripts, but dBu chen and dBu med are the two scripts widely used. dBu can is used more in texts and print works, while dBu med is used in daily cursive handwriting.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

They are: ka, kha, ga, nga. ca, cha, ja, nya. ta, tha, da, na. pa, pha, ba, ma. tsa, tsha, dza, wa. zha, za, 'ha, ya. ra, la, sha, sa, ha and a.

[2]:

They are: i, u, e and o.

[3]:

They are: ga, da, ba, ma and 'a

[4]:

They are: ga, nga, da, na, ba, ma, 'a, ra, la and sa

[5]:

They are: da and sa

[6]:

Twelve Ra-mgo: rka, rga, rnga, rja, rnya, rta, rda, rna, rba, rma, rtsa and rdza

[7]:

Ten La-mgo: lka, lga, lnga, lja, lta and lpa

[8]:

Eleven Sa-mgo: ska, sga, snga, snya, sta, sda, sna, spa, sba and sma

[9]:

Seven Ya-rtags: kya, khya, gya, pya, phya, bya and mya

[10]:

Six La rtags: kla, gla, bla, zla, rla and sla

[11]:

Thirteen Ra rtags: kra, khra, gra, tra, thra, dra, nra, pra, phra, bra, mra, sra and hra

[12]:

Bod rgya tshig mdzod chen mo, stod cha, p-945 ff, ku mud dgra, khyab byed, khri can……. srid-pa'i mig

[13]:

ibid, smed-cha, p-2478 ff, ku mud gnyen, ga bur dbang, rgya mtsho skyes…… bsil zer can…

[14]:

ibid, stod cha, p-69

[15]:

ibid, stod cha, p-1126