The Batak script (natively known as ''surat Batak'', ''surat na sampulu sia'' ("the nineteen letters"), or ''si-sia-sia'') is a

writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable for ...

used to write the

Austronesian Austronesian may refer to: *The Austronesian languages *The historical Austronesian peoples The Austronesian peoples, sometimes referred to as Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, M ...

Batak languages __FORCETOC__ The Batak languages are a subgroup of the Austronesian languages spoken by the Batak people in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra and surrounding areas. Internal classification The Batak languages can be divided into two ma ...

spoken by several million people on the

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

n island of Sumatra. The script may be derived from the

Kawi Kawi may refer to: * Kawi language, oldest attested phase of the Javanese language * Kawi script, writing system used across Southeast Asia from the 8th century to around 1500 AD ::Kawi (Unicode block), the script in Unicode * Mount Kawi, a volcano ...

and

Pallava script The Pallava script or Pallava Grantha, is a Brahmic script, named after the Pallava dynasty of South India, attested since the 4th century AD. As epigrapher Arlo Griffiths makes clear, however, the term is misleading as not all of the relevant ...

, ultimately derived from the

Brahmi script Brahmi (; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such ...

of India, or from the hypothetical Proto-Sumatran script influenced by Pallava.

History

The Batak magicians and priests or ''datu'' used the Batak script mainly for magical texts and divinatory purposes. It is unknown how many non-specialists were literate in the Batak script, but judging from the widespread tradition of writing love laments, especially among the Karo, Simalungun, and Angkola-Mandailing Batak, it is likely that a considerable part of the non-specialist population was able to read and write the Batak script. After the arrival of Europeans in the Batak lands, first German missionaries and, from 1878 onwards, the Dutch, the Batak script was, alongside the Roman script, taught in the schools, and teaching and religious materials were printed in the Batak script. Soon after the first World War the missionaries decided to discontinue printing books in the Batak script.Kozok 2009:168. The script soon fell out of use and is now only used for ornamental purposes.

Origin

The Batak script was probably derived from

Pallava The Pallava dynasty existed from 275 CE to 897 CE, ruling a significant portion of the Deccan, also known as Tondaimandalam. The dynasty rose to prominence after the downfall of the Satavahana dynasty, with whom they had formerly served as f ...

and

Old Kawi The Kawi or or Old Javanese script is a Brahmic script found primarily in Java and used across much of Maritime Southeast Asia between the 8th century and the 16th century.Aditya Bayu Perdana and Ilham Nurwansah 2020Proposal to encode Kawi ...

scripts, which ultimately were derived from the

, the root of almost all the Indic and Southeast Asian scripts.

Structure

Batak is written from left to right and top to bottom. Like all Brahmi-based scripts, each consonant has an inherent vowel of , unless there is a diacritic (in Toba Batak called ''pangolat'') to indicate the lack of a vowel. Other vowels, final '' ŋ'', and final velar fricative are indicated by

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s, which appear above, below, or after the letter. For example, ''ba'' is written ba (one letter); ''bi'' is written ba.i (''i'' follows the consonant); ''bang'' is written ba^ŋ (''ŋ'' is above the consonant); and ''bing'' is ba^ŋ.i. Final consonants are written with the ''pangolat'' (here represented by "#"): ''bam'' is ba.ma.#. However, ''bim'' is written ba.ma.i.#: the first diacritic belongs to the first consonant, and the second belongs to the second consonant, but both are written at the end of the entire syllable. Unlike most Brahmi-based scripts, Batak does not form consonant conjuncts.

Basic characters

The basic characters are called ''surat''. Each consonant has an inherent vowel of . The script varies by region and language. The major variants are between

Karo Karo may refer to: Ethnic groups * Karo people (East Africa), a group of tribes in East Africa * Karo people (Ethiopia), an ethnic group from Ethiopia * Karo people (Indonesia), the indigenous people of the Karo Plateau in North Sumatra Language ...

Mandailing The Mandailing is an ethnic group in Sumatera, Indonesia that is commonly associated with the Batak people. They are found mainly in the northern section of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. They came under the influence of the Kaum Padri wh ...

, Pakpak/Dairi,

Simalungun Simalungun Regency is a regency in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Its seat was formerly at Pematangsiantar, but this city was in recent years separated from the Regency and made into an independent city (''kota''), although it remains geographically su ...

/Timur, and Toba: Alternate forms:
Batak Na-2

(used in Mandailing) Batak Wa-1

Diacritics

Diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s are used to change the pronunciation of a character. They can change the vowel from the inherent , mark a final elar nasal, mark a final

velar fricative A velar fricative is a fricative consonant produced at the velar place of articulation. It is possible to distinguish the following kinds of velar fricatives: *Voiced velar fricative, a consonant sound written as in the International Phonetic Alp ...

, or indicate a final consonant with no vowel:

Ligatures with U

The diacritic for U used by Mandailing, Pakpak, Simalungun, and Toba can form

ligatures Ligature may refer to: * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure ** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry * Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...

with its base character:

Tompi

In Mandailing, the diacritic ''tompi'' can be used to change the sound of some characters:

Placement of diacritics for Ng and H

The diacritics for Ng ( Batak sign Ng

) and H (

) are usually written above spacing vowel diacritics instead of above the base character.
Examples: Batak syllable ping

ping,

pong,

peh, and

pih.

Diacritic reordering for closed syllables

Vowel diacritics are reordered for closed syllables (that is, syllables where the final consonant has no vowel). Consonants with no vowel are marked by the Batak ''pangolat'' or ''panongonan'' diacritic, depending on the language. When they are used for a closed syllable (like "tip"), both the vowel diacritic and the pangolat/panongonan are written at the end of the syllable. Examples of closed syllables using ''pangolat'':

Punctuation and ornaments

Batak is normally written without spaces or punctuation (as scriptio continua). However, special marks or

bindu Bindu ( sa, बिंदु) is a term meaning "point" or "dot". Bindu may also refer to: * Bindu (symbol) * Bindu, India, village in Darjeeling district of West Bengal India * Anusvara, a diacritical mark represented as a ''bindu'' or dot * ''B ...

are occasionally used. They vary greatly in size and design from manuscript to manuscript.

Unicode

Batak script was added to the

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

Standard in October 2010 with the release of version 6.0.

Block

The Unicode block for Batak is U+1BC0–U+1BFF:

Rendering

Unicode fonts for Batak must handle several requirements to properly render text:

Gallery

File:Paper Museum in Atlanta 010.JPG, Batak book about the art of divination from a

rooster The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adu ...

(

Robert C. Williams Paper Museum The Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking is a research institution and public museum dedicated to the preservation of the history of paper and paper technology. Located inside the Paper Tricentennial Building at the Georgia Institute ...

in Atlanta, Georgia, USA) File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Bamboe tabaks- en wichelkoker met Bataks schrift TMnr 512-4.jpg, Batak script carved into a bamboo tube with wooden stopper (

Museum of the Tropics A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that Preservation (library and archival science), cares for and displays a collection (artwork), collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, culture, cultu ...

in Amsterdam, The Netherlands) File:Bamboo with Batak script.jpg, Bamboo inscribed with Simalungun Batak script ( National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, The Netherlands) File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Wichelboekje van palmblad TMnr 5991-6.jpg, Batak palm leaf book (

in Amsterdam, The Netherlands) File:COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Wichelboek met formules recepten en voorschriften die worden toegepast door de priester-genezer TMnr 1581-1.jpg, Book of formulas, recipes, and rules applied by Batak priests (

in Amsterdam, The Netherlands) File:Book of Wizards Batak Indonesia.jpg, Magic book used by priests of the Toba Batak tribe ( National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, The Netherlands) File:Manuscript in Toba-Batak language, central Sumatra, early 1800s - Robert C. Williams Paper Museum - DSC00360.JPG, Manuscript in Batak Toba language, central Sumatra, early 1800s. (

in Atlanta, Georgia, USA) File:Batak Pustaha = Magic Book, leaf 73.tif, alt=Batak Pustaha, Batak Pustaha (Magic Book) (

SOAS University of London SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury are ...

) - '
entire manuscript viewable online
''

Citations

Sources

* * *

External links

* Entry o
Batak
a
Omniglot.com – A guide to writing systems

Transtoba2
– Roman to Toba Batak script transliteration software by Uli Kozok and Leander Seige (GNU GPL) * Uli Kozok'
Batak Script website
with free Batak fonts. *http://unicode-table.com/en/sections/batak/
Full Batak manuscript
at SOAS University of London. {{DEFAULTSORT:Batak Script Indonesian scripts Brahmic scripts North Sumatra Batak