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Scribes & ScriptsThis Page contains Indic text. without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and alack of conjuncts.
In today's world we have many mediums with which we can record our knowledge and newsworthy events. However if it were not for the legacy of knowledge, handed down to us by our forbearers via the scribes of their day, we would not have had the knowledge to develop these mediums. Today we define the beginning of history as the time of written history. Therefore the time before writing is termed as the prehistoric era. Unfortunately many repositories where the ancient scribe's work was collected, including the great library of Alexandria have been destroyed. Fortunately some works have survived especially those inscribed in stone. Code of Hammurabi Cuneiform law is viewed as the legal predecessor of Biblical law and Jewish law. So
through the ages humans have scribed in
rock, wood and metal, written on papyrus, parchment and paper. Used
printing presses and typewriters and now, computers. With the advent of
computers a whole new language has evolved or to be more precise,
Languages [hundreds if not thousands of them].
Therefore today many of our scribes go under a different name: A programmer or software developer is someone who programs computers, that is, one who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to programming may also be known as a programmer analyst, software engineer, computer scientist, or software analyst. A programmer's primary computer language (Java, C++, etc.) is often prefixed to the above titles, and those who work in a web environment often prefix their titles with web. Those proficient in computer programming skills may become famous, though this regard is normally limited to software engineering circles. Many of the most notable programmers are often labeled hackers. Programmers often have or project an image of individualist geekdom, resistance to "suits" (referring to both business suits literally and figuratively to the "Establishment"), controls, and unionization. Ada Lovelace is popularly credited as history's first programmer. She was the first to express an algorithm intended for implementation on a computer, Charles Babbage's analytical engine, in October 1842. Just as the Egyptians intentionally kept their hieroglyphs complicated to protect their trade - today there is an air of mystique manufactured around computer programming. Just as the term "computer script" is termed "computer code", implies. MyScribeWeb intends to take some of the mystique out of the computer script environment. Within the members area you will be able to download hundreds of tested usable scripts. More importantly we show you step by step how to write your own. We will even give you the software to create your own products and create your own websites to market your product from. Even if you have never used a computer, access to the members area will enable you to use a complete computer guide from raw beginner to advanced operator. Also a complete web building course including web building program and hundreds of templates and content. You will be able to download or work online, it's your choice. Spend 10 minutes a day or however long you want - again it's your choice. If you are a writer and have a manuscript you want a publisher to see, as a member, we invite you to showcase your details on this site with a small example of your work. We will invite the publishers to view your submission. If the publishers are interested in your work they will contact you. If you prefer to publish your own work we will provide you with all the tools you need to create and publish your own book or e-book. Your membership will entitle you to use and download everything within the site to one computer. Membership does not entitle you to resell or give away anything from within the membership site. Membership is US$100 per year. To Join as a member click on the "subscribe" link at the top of the page. The following texts are placed in the interest of furthering information and education via the Internet. Feel free to copy or print any material below this line for personal or school project use. Scribes & Scripts Ganesh The
son of Shiva and Parvati.
Known as the elephant god remover of obstacles. Famous as the scribe of the Vedas. Ganesh, also called Ganapati, the elephant headed God of Wisdom and Success is the defender and remover of obstacles and has to be propitiated first before worshiping other Gods. He is one of the sons of Siva and Parvati. He is known as "Sidhi Data' or harbinger of success in the work. His elephant head is believed to be an emblem of wisdom. His head often has one full tusk, while the other is broken. It is said that he lost it in a fight or that he used it to scribe the Maha-Bharata for the sage Vyasa. His mount or standard is a rat, a symbol in Hindu fable of the sagacity and trickery of this world, much like the fox in the west. So it is natural that the rat should first be conquered, then subdued and employed by the being who represents spiritual strength, whom he was bound to recognize as his superior, since his own cunning would tell him that Ganesh would prove a better guide than even his own perspicacity. SANSKRITSir
William Jones, speaking to the
Asiatic Society in Calcutta, February 2, 1786, said:
The
Sanskrit language whatever be its
antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek,
more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either,
yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of
verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been
produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could
examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some
common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.
Sanskrit in modern
Indian scripts. May Śiva bless those who take delight in the language of the gods. (Kalidasa) Devimahatmya manuscript on palm-leaf, in an early Bhujimol script, Bihar or Napal, 11th century. The
adjective samskita-
means "cultured". The language referred to as samskitā
vāk "the language of cultured" has by definition always
been a "high" language, used for religious and learned discourse and
contrasted with the languages spoken by the people. It is also called
deva-bhāsā meaning
"language of the gods". The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is Pānini's Astādhyāyī ("Eight-Chapter
Grammar") dating to ca. the 5th century BC. It is essentially a
prescriptive grammar, i.e., an authority that defines (rather than
describes) correct Sanskrit, although it contains descriptive parts,
mostly to account for Vedic forms that had already passed out of use in
Panini's time.
Sanskrit
belongs to the Indo-Aryan
sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages. Together with the
Iranian languages it belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch and as such is
part of the Satem group of Indo-European languages, which also includes
the Balto-Slavic branch.
When
the term arose in India,
"Sanskrit" was not thought of as a specific language set apart from
other languages, but rather as a particularly refined or perfected
manner of speaking. Knowledge of Sanskrit was a marker of social class
and educational attainment and the language was taught mainly to
members of the higher castes, through close analysis of Sanskrit
grammarians such as Pānini.
Sanskrit as the learned language of Ancient India thus existed
alongside the Prakrits (vernaculars), which evolved into the modern
Indo-Aryan languages (Hindi, Assamese, Urdu, Bengali etc.). Most of the
Dravidian languages of India, despite being a separate linguistic
family in their own right, are highly influenced by Sanskrit,
especially in terms of loanwords. Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam have
the highest incidence of loans while Tamil has the lowest. This
influence of Sanskrit on these languages is recognized by the notions
of Tat Sama (equivalent) and Tat Bhava (rooted in). Sanskrit itself has
also been exposed to Dravidian substratum influence since very ancient
times.
Great
Scribes of India Include:
Tulasidas
-"Ramacharita - manasa"
Bankim
Chandra -"Vande Matararam"
Kalidas
-"Rughuvamsha"
Tenali
Ramakrishna - "Panduranga Mahatyam"
Namadeva
- 2,375 compositions of Abhangs.
Maharishi
Valmiki -"Ramayana"
EGYPTIAN SCRIBESStatue of a Scribe Amenemhet, Buhen, Dynasty 18, reign of Hatshepsut (1479-?1458 b.c.), Diorite, 37 x 23 cm.) Scribes
were near the top of Egyptian society, and capable scribes could do
very well. One, Horemheb, even became king. Students were trained
rigorously for about five years beginning at the age of nine. This was
often a problem because the young pupils could see children of their
own age playing in the fields. Papyri have been discovered containing
reprimands from senior to junior scribes about neglecting lessons;
physical punishment was sometimes recommended. One form of
encouragement offered to pupils was a list of the drawbacks of other
professions—exaggerated, of course. For example, jewelers and
metalworkers were said to choke in the heat of their furnaces, weavers
had to put up with cramped conditions. But the scribe could look
forward to authority, freedom from taxes, national service during times
of flood, and immortality through his writings.
Egyptian
artists were professional scribes who specialized in draftsmanship for
royal or funerary monuments. From unfinished tombs like that of King
Horemheb it is possible to see all the stages involved in painting.
First, junior draftsmen drew the scenes in red ocher on the dry
plaster. Next, senior artists made corrections in black outline. The
painters would then fill in the outlines with color, or sculptors would
cut away the background plaster to form a relief for painting.
Scribes
had to be experts in writing hieroglyphs, an elaborate form of picture
writing using about 700 different signs. It was deliberately kept
complicated so that not many people could master it and scribes could
keep their special position. Hieroglyphs were used on state monuments,
temples, tombs, and religious papyri. They could be written from left
to right, right to left, or top to bottom. For business contracts,
letters, and stories, scribes used a different form of writing
(script), called hieratic, which was a fast-written version of
hieroglyphs, always running from right to left. Later on, an even more
rapid script evolved, called demotic. At the end of the Egyptian
civilization, scribes also had to be able to write Greek, the language
of their overlords.
From
John D. Clare, Living History –Pyramids of Ancient Egypt
The
Egyptians developed writing before
3000 b.c. They used picture symbols now called hieroglyphs from the
Greek word for sacred carvings. They wrote on papyrus, a paper made
from reeds, and worked from right to left across the page. Writing in
hieroglyphs took a long time because each document was really a very
complicated painting. For speed, Egyptians sometimes used a faster,
"hieratic," script with simpler symbols.
The
people who used the new writing
held important jobs and were called scribes. The hieroglyph for
"scribe" was a drawing of a paint palette with red and black paint, a
water pot, and a brush.
All
Egyptian children went to school when they were four years old. At
twelve most left school. The boys began to learn their
fathers’ trades, while girls helped their mothers in the
house. The sons of officials who were to become scribes went on
studying for several years. Some girls stayed on and became scribes,
but in the Old Kingdom people often mocked the writings of women.
Many
careers were open to the scribes. They might work for the Army or the
Treasury. They could go into medicine, the priesthood, or architecture.
Teachers encouraged their students to work hard. The life of a scribe
is better than most, one old document says. The scribe is his own boss,
whereas "the metal smith works in the heat of the furnace. He stinks
like rotten fish eggs."
The
scholars learn proverbs and stories by heart and copy texts onto
specially prepared pieces of pottery and limestone slates.
They
learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, and older pupils study
geography and history. Teachers emphasize memorization. Questioning and
lack of respect are punished, sometimes by beating.
Sometimes
the pupils whisper and daydream and long for noon, when their mothers
will bring them a meal of bread and barley wine.
COPTIC MANUSCRIPTCourtesy
of the Scriptorium
ARABIC CALLIGRAPHYBelow is the stylized signature of Sultan
Mahmud 11 of the Ottoman
Empire.
It reads "Mahmud Khan son of Abdulhamid is forever victorious." Page of a 12th century Qur'an written in the in the Andalusi script. Arabic
Calligraphy decorated Islamic fabrics These decorations were also
symbols. The Arabic calligraphy that decorated royal fabrics, which is
called Tiraz, had political references to the names of caliphs, rulers,
and sultans. These inscriptions represented important signs of a
ruler's power in the Middle Ages and some were entreaties to God. The white, grey, and brown printed linen [Flax] fragment is decorated with a Naskh inscription band on a background of foliage. The letters have animal-like finials, or endings, such as lions, hares, birds, and griffins, very similar to those seen on Mamluk [Style] metalwork . Created in the 14th Century AD. Courtesy of the Scriptorium
The
traditional instrument of the
Arabic calligrapher is the qalam, a pen made of dried reed; the ink is
often in color, and chosen such that its intensity can vary greatly, so
that the greater strokes of the compositions can be very dynamic in
their effect.
A
variety of media were employed for
presenting calligraphy. Before the advent of paper, papyrus and
parchment were used for writing. The advent of paper revolutionized
calligraphy. While monastries in Europe treasured a few dozen volumes,
libraries in the Muslim world regularly contained hundreds and even
thousands of volumes of books.
Another
media for calligraphy were
coins. Beginning in 692, the Islamic caliphate reformed the coinage of
the Near East by replacing visual depiction by words. This was
especially true for dinars, or gold coins of high value. Generally the
coins were inscribed with quotes from the Quran.
By
the tenth century, the Persians,
who had converted to Islam, began weaving inscriptions on to
elaborately patterend silks. So precious were calligraphic inscribed
textile, that Crusaders brought them to Europe as prized possesions. A
notable example is the Shroud of St. Josse, used to wrap the bones of
St. Josse in teh abbey of St. Josse-sur-Mer near Caen in northwestern
France.
  Arabic calligram in the shape of a bird. CHINESE SCRIPT Four percent of Chinese characters are derived directly from individual pictograms (Chinese: 象形字; pinyin: xiàngxíngzì), and in most of those cases the relationship is not necessarily clear to the modern reader. Of the remaining 96%, some are logical aggregates (Simplified Chinese: 会 意字; Traditional Chinese: 會意字; pinyin: huìyìzì), which are characters combined from multiple parts indicative of meaning, but most are pictophonetics (Simplified Chinese: 形声字; Traditional Chinese: 形 聲字; pinyin: xíng-shēngzì), characters containing two parts where one indicating a general category of meaning and the other the sound, though the sound is often only approximate to the modern pronunciation because of changes over time and differences between source languages. The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large number of these are rarely-used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown that full literacy requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Chinese tradition, each character corresponds to a single syllable. Most words in all modern varieties of Chinese are polysyllabic and thus require two or more characters to write. Cognates in the various Chinese languages/dialects which have the same or similar meaning but different pronunciations can be written with the same character. In addition, many characters were adopted according to their meaning by the Japanese and Korean languages to represent native words, disregarding pronunciation altogether. The loose relationship between phonetics and characters has thus made it possible for them to be used to write very different and probably unrelated languages. Just as Roman letters have a characteristic shape (lower-case letters occupying a roundish area, with ascenders or descenders on some letters), Chinese characters occupy a more or less square area. Characters made up of multiple parts squash these parts together in order to maintain a uniform size and shape — this is the case especially with characters written in the Sòngtǐ style. Because of this, beginners often practise on squared graph paper, and the Chinese sometimes use the term "Square-Block Characters" (Simplified Chinese: 方块字; Traditional Chinese: 方塊字; pinyin: fāngkuàizì). The actual shape of many Chinese characters varies in different cultures. Mainland China adopted simplified characters in 1956, but Traditional Chinese characters are still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Singapore has also adopted simplified Chinese characters. Postwar Japan has used its own less drastically simplified characters since 1946, while South Korea has limited its use of Chinese characters, and Vietnam and North Korea have completely abolished their use in favour of romanized Vietnamese and Hangul, respectively. Chinese characters are also known as sinographs, and the Chinese writing system as sinography. Non-Chinese languages which have adopted sinography — and, with the orthography, a large number of loanwords from the Chinese language — are known as Sinoxenic languages, whether or not they still use the characters. The term does not imply any genetic affiliation with Chinese. The major Sinoxenic languages are generally considered to be Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Also see: ROMAN SCRIBES - LATIN + ROMAN NUMERALS |
