Progress Of Indic Languages Vs English - 2

[Bodhi]

Yes Bharatvarsh you are right, as far as classical skt texts go, they never have ? or ! or comma etc. Only | or || are the pUrNa virAma symbols. Indication of comma as the ardha virAma came about in middle ages though I beleive. In one of the traditional style, especially in pkt, and in some texts even of skt and old Hindi, you can also find every word of a sentance joined together on a single horizontal bar without any gap or space in between the words. So the reader must identify when one word ends and the next starts. But then those texts were intended for them who had orally learnt the text by heart, and written text was only supporting/secondary. (Why was it done? I think because it made it very hard to make forgeries and fraudulant copies. One mistake and the whole text is spoilt. But I may be wrong here.)