Letters from the Seams of a Skull

Devanagari is one of the widely used scripts in the world

Devanagari is used for Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi, and Nepali languages and so is used all over the Indian subcontinent and the surrounding areas.

Devanagari is an abugida alphabet or alphasyllabary, which means that there are distinct vowels and consonants, but that vowels are also used to modify the consonants, which unmodified have a certain syllable sound.

Devanagari is most easily recognized by the bar that runs across the top of the script, from which all the letter seem to descend.

Some consonants in Devanagari. (Wikimedia)

Devanagari has been used from about the 12th century CE. There are about 50 letters in the Devanagari script, not counting the numerous derivations caused by combining the consonants with vowels. Devanagari is read from left to right.

The Vedas, the Hindu scriptures are generally written in Devanagari and the word "Devanagari" derives from deva, deity, and nagari, city.

In Hindu myth, the Devanagari script comes from Brahma. When Brahma went to write down his teachings, he found that there was no system to record them with. In order to share his teachings, he invented writing, using the seams of the skull as a pattern for the letters.

In some forms of the myth, it is Sarasvati, Brahma's wife, who invents the letters. Sarasvati (sometimes Saraswati or Saraswathi) is the goddess of knowledge, music, and arts, so writing would fall within her purview.

Svarasvati, holding a string of crystals, a book of the Vedas, and playing the veena (Wikimedia)

For the first post in my Writing Systems series, see The Beginning of History.

Share Spotlight: Understanding Ukraine

This week's Share Spotlight comes from the Vlogbrothers.
Understanding Ukraine: The Problems Today and Some Historical Context

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia keeps rolling on. Frankly, I've lost track of what's actually happening. But here's John Green, author and all around amazing person to give you a quick summation of the background of the conflict in Ukraine.

And, as a bonus, here's Mid-Revolution: Ukrainian Museum Updates from The Uncataloged Museum, which is from a month or so back and talks about the particular challenges of being a museum on the front lines of a revolution.

What do you think of everything that's been going on? Have you been keeping track? What do you think the best outcome is at this point?

March 2014 Book Roundup

It's been a crazy month, so my roundup is a little slim. I hope you'll give me some new ideas for books now that I have some time to read again!

Barefoot Season by Susan Mallery
This is a novel of old friends torn apart and forced to find their way back together. While there are definite romantic elements, the women's relationship takes center stage. I found my self rooting for both women, who are forced to reexamine their pasts and what they will take forward into the future. Both women are far from perfect, but they acknowledge their faults (eventually) and really strive to be better people.

Steadfast by Mercedes Lackey
This is the ninth installment in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series, based on the story of the Steadfast Tin Soldier. All of the books are fabulous and this one is no exception. I have really enjoyed that the later books in the series have moved away from the all powerful Masters toward the less powerful Magicians. It means less reliance on power and more on wits to win the day, which I find refreshing in a fantasy novel.

Found any great books recently? Let me know in the comments!

Baba Yaga

Every culture has a being used to scared children. In America, it's the Bogey Man. In Russia, it's Baba Yaga.


Baba Yaga is a witch common in the folklore of Eastern Europe and Russia. Baba means grandmother, but is probably better translated as old woman or wise woman, since Baba Yaga is far from grandmotherly.

Baba Yage is generally depicted as an old crone who lives in the woods. Her house stands on chicken legs, spinning shrieking constantly until the magic words are said. The house's windows are often characterized as eyes and sometimes a fence made of bones encircles the house.

Baba Yaga herself travels in a mortar, using a pestle as a rudder and sweeping away traces of her presence with a silver birch broom.

Baba Yaga traveling in her mortar and carrying her pestle and silver birch broom. Painted by Ivan Bilibin. (Wikimedia Commons)

Baba Yaga is a complex figure in Eastern European and Russian Folklore. She is often the antagonist of the story, preventing the hero from reaching his goal and misdirecting people in the woods. However, she is also known to share her wisdom when approached correctly.

One of the most well known stories involving Baba Yaga is that of Vasilisa the Beautiful. Similar to the Western European Cinderella, Vasilisa finds herself at the mercy of her step-mother and two step-sisters. When all of the lights are extinguished, she is sent to Baba Yaga to get coals to relight the fires. After numerous tests, and with the help of a doll given to her by her mother, Vasilisa receives a skull full of coals from Baba Yaga. When she returns home, the skull burns up her step-mother and -sisters and Vasilisa lives happily ever after (in some versions she become Czarina of Russia).

Vasilisia leaving Baba Yaga's house with the skull full of coals. Painted by Ivan Bilibin. (Wikimedia Commons)

Baba Yaga has made several appearances in popular culture, including Bartok the Magnificent, the much less well known but still adorable spin-off movie from Anastasia, where she sends Bartok to complete impossible tasks before she will help him with his own quest.

Share Spotlight: China's Foot Binding Tradition

This week's Share Spotlight comes from the podcast Stuff You Missed in History Class.
China's Food Binding Tradition

Another pretty cool podcast this week, this time from the girls at Stuff You Missed in History Class.
Foot Binding occurred in China for around a thousand years. That, as Holly and Tracey mention, is far too long to consider something a "fad."Although painful and debilitating, foot binding proved difficult to stop and there may still be women alive today with bound feet, since the process survived into the 1950s. The practice was eventually stopped largely due to the response of Christian missionaries, who found the process horrifying.

How do we as outsiders look at this and other cultural practices with an objective lens? As Holly and Tracey ask, where do we draw the line between what we find distasteful and what is actually harmful?
(Though no argument here, this was definitely a harmful practice.)

The Beginning of History

While time may stretch forever, history has a very definite starting point: the invention of writing.

Think for a moment about what you are reading. Words made of 26 little characters that allow me to convey my thoughts to you, despite our distance in time and space.

Writing makes this possible. And that is why the start of "History" is also the start of writing, anything prior to writing is Prehistory.

Before writing, clear communication beyond the person standing in front of you was impossible. Once writing took off, communications could be read hundreds or thousands of years later with only minimal loss of meaning.

Historians rely on primary sources, those that come directly from the people who said them. Without writing, historians would need a time machine to talk to each person who was involved in or experienced an event. Without writing, there would be no history.

Writing has been invented in several places around the globe and every system is a little different.

Wikipedia in scripts around the world.  (Wikimedia Commons)

There are three main types of writing systems.

Alphabets are the most familiar to the readers of this blog, as that is what they are using to read it now. In an alphabet, each symbol stands for a sound. There are separate vowel and consonant symbols and they average between 12 and 50 letter symbols.

Syllabaries have symbols for a combination of a consonant and a vowel. So "ba" would be one symbol while "be" would be another. These systems average between 50 and 400 symbols. Ancient Mayan hieroglyphics are generally considered to be primarily a syllabary, as are the Hiragana and Katakana in the Japanese writing system and the Cherokee writing system.

A Stop Sign written using the Cherokee syllabary. (Wikimedia Commons)

Logographies use symbols to stand for words. Since each word has to have its own symbol, these systems can have hundreds or thousands of symbols. Chinese entirely uses and Japanese mainly uses a logographic writing system. Reading Chinese requires knowledge of 3 to 4 thousand characters.

Japanese uses all three of these systems, which makes it a great example.

In Japanese, the word for

(red)

in Romanji (alphabet): 

aka

in Hiragana (syllabary): 

あか

in Kanji (logography):　

赤

Share Spotlight: The Green Show

This week's Share Spotlight comes from BackStory with the American History Guys.
The Green Show

I found BackStory Radio through one of my classes. They American History Guys trace a topic through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries of American History.

This week, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, they did an entire show about how the color green is important in American history. They are always entertaining and the podcast is perfect to listen to on a busy commute or while preparing dinner. And better yet, you learn something in the bargain!

What do you think is the most important Green thing in American history? (Don't forget to add it to their comments as well.) What podcasts or radio shows do you enjoy listening to?