On the Probable Origin of the Manipuri Vowel Diacritic "-aatap"

James Oinam *

Figure 1 - On the Probable Origin of the Manipuri Vowel Diacritic '-aatap'

A BBC documentary titled "The Secret History of Writing - From Pictures to Words" on YouTube set me to write this article. The documentary is about the origin and evolution of letters or scripts.

First, a brief outline of the content of the programme is necessary to come to understand my conjecture on the origin of the Manipuri vowel diacritic (accent) "-aatap" (the first diacritic in Figure 1) ("Omniglot").

Ancient Egyptians drew pictures to convey their messages to others. (Possibly also true for other ancient civilizations that developed scripts of their own.) However, there are abstract ideas that cannot be drawn such as "beautiful".

For that the sound of the images or pictures were used to form or say those abstract words. This is known as the "rebus principle". Therefore, the image could either mean the thing itself or the sound it represents.

To indicate whether the image itself or the sound should be taken into consideration, Egyptian and Chinese scripts used certain symbols called "classifiers". Even then a lot images were used to communicate in writing. (The Chinese and Japanese still use hundreds of letters.)

Then an extreme form of "rebus principle" was developed by the Canaanites. They used only the beginning sound of the picture. Thus, number of letters necessary to write could be reduced drastically to about 30. These became the first modern alphabets.

Various Canaanite letters were modified and adopted by various cultures to form their letters. The Romans often "reversed" the original letter used by Canaanites, upside down or sideways (like mirror images).

Letters like A, R, M, N, etc. can be traced to Canaanite letters.

Here, our interest in this article is the letter "A". It is believed that this letter originated from the symbol or drawing of a "bull's head".

The word for bull was perhaps "aleph, alif" ("Aleph," Wikipedia). This letter was "reversed" by the Romans, with the "horns" pointing down, forming the modern capital letter "A".

Now we come to the possible link between the Canaanite letter "A" and Manipuri vowel diacritic "-aatap".

The BBC programme mentioned above showed striking similarity between the modern Arabic letter for "A" (which looks like mirror image of Manipuri vowel diacritic "-aatap," the first diacritic in Figure 1) ("Manipuri Kid").

The Arabic scholar in the programme shows the origin of modern Arabic letter for "A" from the Canaanite letter for "A" (see Figure 2)

(Note the lowermost letter on the left, which is modern Arabic letter "A", looks like mirror image of Manipuri diacritic "-aatap". From the top right "A", which can be easily identified with English letter "A", the Arabic scholar draws the evolution the ancient Canaanite letter to modern Arabic.).

Figure 2- On the Probable Origin of the Manipuri Vowel Diacritic '-aatap'

As is evident from the name, the diacritic "-aatap" adds an "A" sound to any Manipuri letter to which it is tagged. This is unlike the "acute" or "grave" accent used in English such as in the word "vis-a-vis" (grave accent over "a").

The grave or acute diacritic only makes the letter "light" or "heavy" but do not add any particular sound to it. (In Figure 1, the diacritic is in red colour tagged to black-coloured alphabet.)

The resemblance in sound and the look (although a mirror image but a practice which is not uncommon as shown by the Roman practice) with the modern Arabic letter is compelling.

For the main Manipuri letters or alphabets, we know the things they are based on (human body parts with subsequent application of rebus principle to write with the script), but I do not think there is any mention of what things the diacritic sounds are based on anywhere.

Hence, it is likely that they were inspired or else adopted from other cultures. According to the programme, rebus principle is something that comes naturally to humans (in the form of puns/jokes). Therefore, original and independent invention of many letters or alphabets by various cultures and civilizations is possible.

References

o "The Secret History of Writing - From Pictures to Words".
Uploaded on September 22, 2020. Accessed on 31 October 2020.
o "Aleph". Wikipedia (link).
o "Manipuri Kid". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zATgS-fkTjA
o "Omniglot". https://omniglot.com/writing/manipuri.htm