The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
To defend the sequence of alphabetisation may seem bizarre, so obvious is its application that it is hard to imagine a reference, catalogue or listing without it. But alphabetical order was not an immediate consequence of the alphabet itself. In the Middle Ages, deference for ecclesiastical tradition left scholars reluctant to categorise things according to the alphabet — to do so would be a rejection of the divine order. The rediscovery of the ancient Greek and Roman classics necessitated more efficient ways of ordering, searching and referencing texts. Government bureaucracy in the 16th and 17th centuries quickened the advance of alphabetical order, bringing with it pigeonholes, notebooks and card indexes.
The main ideas of the paragraph are:
i) The alphabetical order did not directly follow the discovery of alphabets.
ii) Scholars were reluctant to categorize the alphabet in the middle ages because of the fear of rejection of the divine order.
iii) Only after the rediscovery of Greek and Roman classics and the Government bureaucracy in later centuries did the categorization happen.
Option A misses capturing the point of why scholars were reluctant to categorize things according to the alphabet.
Option C is factually incorrect in mentioning the ban on the use. Option D can be eliminated on the same grounds as option A.
Option B captures the essence of the main points most aptly and hence, is the best answer.
Thus, the correct option is B.
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