Brahmi

Brahmi is one of the ancient scripts known to India majorly seen during 4th - 3rd century B.C., in the period of Asoka the Great. Though the oldest script known is the Indus Valley Script, there are also few inscriptions found in 2500 B.C from Indus Valley written in Brahmi, it is evident that Brahmi had a long history even before king Piyadarsi Asoka. “Brahmi” is the mother of almost all Indic Scripts as well as the script for other eastern Asian countries like Sumatra, Java, Bali, China and Malaysia. The book is a brief introduction about the ancient script Brahmi. This book talks about ancient writing styles and how they further developed into various other descendants. Brief historical documentation of scattered information is put together in the form of a book. Another challenge was to translate a large amount of text into visuals.

The audience is largely typography enthusiasts, as well as a person deeply interested in scripts. The aim was to look into the past and to rediscover the lost script in a simplified visual narrative.

The graphical representation of the book and visual decisions followed multiple dimensions of experiences I had during my museum’s visits. I wanted the book to reflect the visual language of that era.

Yes, the approach with which I began my project was to understand, try and learn the script - the basic form of how it is written, the visual grammar that it follows. To do this I had to go back in time through the information available in today’s time, in terms of references like books, websites, museums, inscriptions and pictures. I did not have any immediate output in my mind, though I knew output can be of any type of media, later I finalized that into a book which speaks about that era. My visits to places like National Museums both in New Delhi as well as Kolkata cleared a lot of my confusions and gave me a new perspective. I could relate my readings from books and the Internet regarding Brahmi with the real inscriptions and stone edicts.

For me, this project required a lot of understanding of the historical details and evidence. I was dealing with heaps of information. It was difficult for me to choose and arrive at a structure for the book. It was like scratching the past with the available details and stepping into Bramhi with my research and understanding.