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The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used by various languages in several language families in South, East and Southeast Asia: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, and Tai. They were also the source of the dictionary order (gojūon) of Japanese kana.

History

Brahmic scripts descended from the Brahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script for imperial edicts. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the medieval period. Notable examples of such medieval scripts, developed by the 7th or 8th century, include Nagari, Siddham and Sharada.

The Siddhaṃ script was especially important in Buddhism, as many sutras were written in it. The art of Siddham calligraphy survives today in Japan. The tabular presentation and dictionary order of the modern kana system of Japanese writing is believed to be descended from the Indic scripts, most likely through the spread of Buddhism.

Southern Brahmi evolved into the Kadamba, Pallava and Vatteluttu scripts, which in turn diversified into other scripts of South India and Southeast Asia. Brahmic scripts spread in a peaceful manner, Indianization, or the spread of Indian learning. The scripts spread naturally to Southeast Asia, at ports on trading routes. At these trading posts, ancient inscriptions have been found in Sanskrit, using scripts that originated in India. At first, inscriptions were made in Indian languages, but later the scripts were used to write the local Southeast Asian languages. Hereafter, local varieties of the scripts were developed. By the 8th century, the scripts had diverged and separated into regional scripts.

• A fragment of Ashoka's 6th pillar edict, in Brahmi, the ancestor of all Brahmic scripts
• Spread of Brahmic family of scripts (and Kharosthi) from the subcontinent.

Characteristics

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Some characteristics, which are present in most but not all the scripts, are:

• Each consonant has an inherent vowel which is usually a short ‘ə’ (in Bengali, Assamese and Odia, the phoneme is /ɔ/ due to sound shifts). Other vowels are written by adding to the character. A mark, known in Sanskrit as a virama/halanta/hasanta, can be used to indicate the absence of an inherent vowel, although it is rarely used.
• Each vowel has two forms, an independent form when not attached to a consonant, and a dependent form, when attached to a consonant. Depending on the script, the dependent forms can be either placed to the left of, to the right of, above, below, or on both the left and the right sides of the base consonant.
• Consonants (up to 4 in Devanagari) can be combined in ligatures. Special marks are added to denote the combination of 'r' with another consonant.
• Nasalization and aspiration of a consonant's dependent vowel is also noted by separate signs.
• The alphabetical order is: vowels, velar consonants, palatal consonants, retroflex consonants, dental consonants, bilabial consonants, approximants, sibilants, and other consonants. Each consonant grouping had four stops (with all four possible values of voicing and aspiration), and a nasal consonant.

Comparison

Below are comparison charts of several of the major Indic scripts, organised on the principle that glyphs in the same column all derive from the same Brahmi glyph. Accordingly:

• The charts are not comprehensive. Glyphs may be unrepresented if they are later inventions not derived from any Brahmi character.
• The pronunciations of glyphs in the same column may not be identical. The pronunciation row is only representative; the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation is given for Sanskrit where possible, or another language if necessary.

The transliteration is indicated in ISO 15919.

Consonants

Notes

1. This list tries to include characters of same origins, not same sounds. In Bengali র is pronounced as rô but it is originally va which is still used for wa sound in Mithilakshar and modern Assamese ৱ (wabbô) was derived from middle Assamese র (wô). Compare with জ (ja) য (ya) and য় (ẏ) which are pronounced as jô, jô and e̯ô in Bengali and zô, zô and yô in Assamese respectively. য is related to Devanagari य (ya) and it is still pronounced as "ya" in Mithilakshar. Since their sounds shifted, the dots were added to keep the original sounds.
2. Letter used in Balti.
3. includes supplementary consonants not in contemporary use
4. inherent vowel is ā
5. ^ Modified forms of these letters are or were used for distinctions made in local language; these distinctions are not made for Sanskrit and Pali.
6. ^ Modified forms of these letters are or were used for distinctions made in Thai; these distinctions are not made for Sanskrit and Pali in the Thai script.
7. ^ These letters are obsolete, but were used mainly for Sanskrit and Pali in the Lao script.
8. ^ Letters used in Old Javanese. They are now obsolete, but are used for honorifics in contemporary Javanese.
9. Invented new character to represent the Arabic letter خ.
10. Letter used in Old Sundanese. It is now obsolete.
11. Invented new character. Actually to represent the Arabic letter ش, which has similar pronunciation with śa.

Vowels

Vowels are presented in their independent form on the left of each column, and in their corresponding dependent form (vowel sign) combined with the consonant k on the right. A glyph for ka is an independent consonant letter itself without any vowel sign, where the vowel a is inherent.

Notes

1. ^ Letters for r̥̄, l̥, l̥̄ and a few others are obsolete or very rarely used.
2. includes supplementary vowels not in contemporary use
3. ^ Tibetan, Lepcha, Limbu, New Tai Lue, Thai and Lao scripts do not have independent vowel forms. For syllables starting with a vowel sound, a "zero" consonant (ཨ, อ or ອ respectively) is used to represent the glottal stop /ʔ/.
4. When used to write their own languages, Khmer can have either an a or an o as the inherent vowel, following the rules of its orthography.
5. ^ Letters used in Old Sundanese. They are now obsolete.

Numerals

Notes

1. Mongolian numerals are derived from Tibetan numerals and used in conjunction with the Mongolian and Clear script
2. for everyday use
3. for liturgical use

List of Brahmic scripts

Historical

The Brahmi script was already divided into regional variants at the time of the earliest surviving epigraphy around the 3rd century BC. Cursives of the Brahmi script began to diversify further from around the 5th century AD and continued to give rise to new scripts throughout the Middle Ages. The main division in antiquity was between northern and southern Brahmi. In the northern group, the Gupta script was very influential, and in the southern group the Vatteluttu and Kadamba/Pallava scripts with the spread of Buddhism sent Brahmic scripts throughout Southeast Asia.

Early Brahmic scripts
IAST	Ashoka	Girnar	Chandra -gupta	Gujarat	Prayagraj	Narbada	Kistna
a
ā
i
ī
u
ū
ṛ
e
ai
o
au
k
kh
g
gh
ṅ
c
ch
j
jh
ñ
ṭ
ṭh
ḍ
ḍh
ṇ
t
th
d
dh
n
p
ph
b
bh
m
y
r
l
v
ś
ṣ
s
h

Northern Brahmic

• Gupta, 4th century
  • Sharada
    • Landa
      • Gurmukhi
      • Khojki
      • Khudabadi
      • Mahajani
      • Multani
    • Takri
      • Chamba
      • Dogri
      • Sirmauri
  • Siddhaṃ
    • Nagari
      • Devanagari
      • Modi
      • Gujarati
      • Nandinagari
      • Kaithi
        • Sylheti Nagari
    • Kamarupi
      • Assamese
    • Gaudi
      • Bengali–Assamese (Eastern Nagari)
        • Assamese
        • Bengali
      • Tirhuta (Mithilakshar)
      • Odia
    • Nepalese
      • Bhujimol
      • Ranjana
        • Soyombo
      • Pracalit
  • Tibetan
    • Meetei Mayek
    • Lepcha
      • Limbu
    • Khema
    • ʼPhags-pa
      • Zanabazar square
    • Marchen
      • Marchung
      • Pungs-chen
      • Pungs-chung
      • Drusha
  • Dives Akuru
  • Kalinga
  • Bhaiksuki
• Tocharian (Slanting Brahmi)

Southern Brahmic

• Tamil-Brahmi, 2nd century BC
  • Pallava
    • Tamil
    • Grantha
      • Malayalam
      • Tigalari/Tulu
      • Saurashtra
    • Khmer
      • Khom Thai
      • Proto-Tai script?
        • Sukhothai
          • Thai
          • Fakkham
            • Thai Noi
              • Lao
        • Tai Viet
        • Dai Don
        • Lai Tay
        • Lai Pao
    • Cham
    • Kawi
      • Balinese
      • Batak
      • Buda
      • Javanese
      • Old Sundanese
        • Sundanese
      • Lontara
      • Makasar
      • Ulu scripts
        • Incung
        • Lampung
        • Lembak
        • Ogan
        • Pasemah
        • Rejang
        • Serawai
      • Baybayin
        • Buhid
        • Hanunó'o
        • Tagbanwa
        • Kulitan
        • Basahan
    • Mon–Burmese
      • Modern Mon
      • Burmese
        • Chakma
        • S'gaw Karen
        • Shan
        • Tanchangya
        • Lik-Tai scripts
          • Ahom
          • Khamti
          • Tai Le
      • Tai Tham
        • New Tai Lue
    • Pyu
  • Vatteluttu
    • Kolezhuthu
    • Malayanma
  • Sinhala
• Kadamba
  • Telugu-Kannada
    • Kannada
      • Goykanadi
    • Telugu

Unicode of Brahmic scripts

As of Unicode version 16.0, the following Brahmic scripts have been encoded:

See also

• Devanagari transliteration
  • International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
  • National Library at Kolkata romanisation
• Bharati Braille, the unified braille assignments of Indian languages
• Indus script – symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation
• Indian Script Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) – the coding scheme specifically designed to represent Indic scripts

References

1. ^ Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010). A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 177–178. ISBN 978-0-521-65320-6.
2. Court, C. (1996). Introduction. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.) The World's Writing Systems (pp. 443). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Court, C. (1996). The spread of Brahmi Script into Southeast Asia. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.) The World's Writing Systems (pp. 445–449). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
4. ^ Sproat, Richard (20 July 2006). "Brahmi-derived scripts, script layout, and segmental awareness". Written Language and Literacy. 9 (1): 45–66. doi:10.1075/wll.9.1.05spr. ISSN 1387-6732.
5. Terwiel; Khamdaengyodtai (2003). Shan Manuscripts, Part 1. p. 13.
6. "GAZETTE TITLE: The Manipur Official Language (Amendment) Act, 2021". manipurgovtpress.nic.in.
7. Pandey, Anshuman (23 January 2018). "L2/18-016R: Proposal to encode Dives Akuru in Unicode" (PDF).
8. Pandey, Anshuman (4 November 2015). "L2/15-234R: Proposal to encode the Dogra script" (PDF).
9. "Chapter 13: South and Central Asia-II" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 11.0. Mountain View, California: Unicode, Inc. June 2018. ISBN 978-1-936213-19-1.
10. Aditya Bayu Perdana and Ilham Nurwansah 2020. Proposal to encode Kawi
11. "Chapter 17: Indonesia and Oceania" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 11.0. Mountain View, California: Unicode, Inc. June 2018. ISBN 978-1-936213-19-1.
12. Pandey, Anshuman (2 November 2015). "L2/15-233: Proposal to encode the Makasar script in Unicode" (PDF).
13. Datta, Amaresh (1987). Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature. Sahitya Akademi. p. 142. ISBN 978-81-260-1803-1. The coins of Urakonthauba (568-653) and Ayangba (821-910) in the Mutua Museum, Imphal bear evidence of early existence of old Manipuri alphabet.
14. "GAZETTE TITLE: The Manipur Official Language (Amendment) Act, 2021". manipurgovtpress.nic.in.
15. Daniels (1996), p. 379.
16. Diringer, David (1948). Alphabet a key to the history of mankind. p. 389.

External links

• Online Tool which supports Conversion between various Brahmic Scripts
• Windows Indic Script Support
• An Introduction to Indic Scripts
• South Asian Writing Systems
• Enhanced Indic Transliterator Archived 8 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine Transliterate from romanised script to Indian Languages.
• Indian Transliterator A means to transliterate from romanised to Unicode Indian scripts.
• Imperial Brahmi Font and Text-Editor Archived 26 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine
• Brahmi Script
• Xlit: Tool for Transliteration between English and Indian Languages
• Padma: Transformer for Indic Scripts Archived 1 October 2019 at the Wayback Machine – a Firefox add-on