Tibetan script: Thonmi Sambhota and the letters of the Dharma

In the seventh century Tibet became a great power of Inner Asia under King Songtsen Gampo, who died around 649. According to Tibetan chronicles, the king sent a young minister, Thonmi Sambhota, to India to learn writing and grammar. On his return he is said to have created the Tibetan alphabet, adapting an Indian script to the sounds of his own language. From that moment, tradition says, Tibet was able to receive the teachings of the Buddha in its own books.

Between tradition and history

The figure of Thonmi Sambhota is central to Tibetan religious memory, but some modern scholars have questioned his historicity or suggested that forms of writing already existed before him. It is certain, however, that the Tibetan alphabet derives from an Indian model of the Brahmi family, probably of late Gupta type, although it is debated whether the direct source came from Kashmir, northern India or the region of Khotan.

Tradition also attributes to Thonmi two short grammatical treatises, still studied in monasteries. The oldest evidence of the written language consists of inscriptions on pillars, such as those of Lhasa, and the manuscripts found in the library cave of Dunhuang, walled up around the year 1000 and reopened in 1900, which contain annals, religious texts and administrative documents of the Tibetan empire.

Thirty consonants and four vowels

The Tibetan alphabet has thirty consonants, each with an inherent vowel a, and four signs for the other vowels, placed above or below the letter. Syllables are separated by a small dot, the tsheg, which makes a Tibetan page recognisable at a glance. Classical spelling preserves many letters that are no longer heard in modern pronunciation, a testimony to the language of more than a thousand years ago.

There are two great families of styles. Uchen script, «with a head», has a top line and is used for religious texts and woodblock printing. Ume script, «headless», is more cursive and suited to correspondence. In 1269 the Sakya master Phagpa created for the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan a script derived from Tibetan, designed for all the languages of the empire, which however had a short life.

The canon and the carved stones

Tibetan writing was born in close connection with the translation of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit. Commissions of Tibetan translators and Indian masters fixed a very precise technical vocabulary. In the fourteenth century the scholar Buton Rinchen Drub contributed decisively to the arrangement of the two great collections, the Kangyur, which gathers the words attributed to the Buddha, and the Tengyur, which contains the commentaries.

In Tibet the written word also has a visible presence in the landscape. Along paths and around monasteries stand heaps of mani stones carved with the formula om mani padme hum, and prayer flags printed with sacred texts. In tradition the wind and the stone were believed to spread and preserve the blessing of the written words.

Thus, in one of the highest regions of the world, an alphabet born according to tradition to receive the Dharma has become the foundation of one of the greatest religious literatures of Asia, handed down for centuries in monasteries and now studied all over the world. Many Indian texts lost in the original Sanskrit survive today only in Tibetan translations, which makes that script precious for the history of Indian Buddhism as well.