The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of
abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel n ...
writing systems. They are used throughout the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
,
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainlan ...
and parts of
East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both Geography, geographical and culture, ethno-cultural terms. The modern State (polity), states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. ...
. They are descended from the
Brahmi script of
ancient India and are used by various languages in several language families in
South,
East
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...
and
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainlan ...
:
Indo-Aryan,
Dravidian,
Tibeto-Burman
The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spea ...
,
Mongolic,
Austroasiatic,
Austronesian, and
Tai
Tai or TAI may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*Tai (comics) a fictional Marvel Comics supervillain
*Tai Fraiser, a fictional character in the 1995 film ''Clueless''
*Tai Kamiya, a fictional character in ''Digimon''
Businesses and organisations ...
. They were also the source of the
dictionary order (''
gojūon
In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order. The "fifty" (''gojū'') in its name refers to the 5×10 grid in which the characters are disp ...
'') of
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
''
kana''.
History
Brahmic scripts descended from the
Brahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of
Ashoka
Ashoka (, ; also ''Asoka''; 304 – 232 BCE), popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was the third emperor of the Maurya Empire of Indian subcontinent during to 232 BCE. His empire covered a large part of the Indian subcontinent, s ...
, who used the script
for imperial edicts, but there are some claims of
earlier epigraphy found on pottery in southern India and
Sri Lanka. The most reliable of these were short Brahmi inscriptions dated to the 4th century BCE and published by
Coningham et al. (1996).
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
(also '), also known in its later evolved form as Siddhamātṛkā, is a medieval Brahmic abugida, derived from the Gupta script and ancestral to the Nāgarī, Assamese, Bengali, Tirhuta, Odia and Nepalese scripts.
The word means "acc ...
was especially important in
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...
, 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
''Vatteluttu,'' popularly romanised as ''Vattezhuthu'' ( ta, வட்டெழுத்து, ' and ml, വട്ടെഴുത്ത്, ', ), was a syllabic alphabet of south India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala) and Sri Lanka used for writing t ...
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.
[Court, C. (1996). Introduction. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.) ''The World's Writing Systems'' (pp. 443). Oxford: Oxford University Press.] 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.
[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.]
Image:Asokan brahmi pillar edict.jpg, A fragment of Ashoka's 6th pillar edict, in Brahmi, the ancestor of all Brahmic scripts
File:Brahmic script travel from India.png, Spread of Brahmic family of scripts (and Kharosthi) from India
Characteristics
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, can be used to indicate the absence of an inherent vowel.
* 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
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is t ...
is:
vowels
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...
,
velar consonants,
palatal consonants,
retroflex consonants,
dental consonants,
bilabial consonants,
approximants,
sibilants
Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ...
, 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 do not derive from any Brahmi character, but are later inventions.
* The pronunciations of glyphs in the same column may not be identical. The pronunciation row is only representative; the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
(IPA) pronunciation is given for
Sanskrit where possible, or another language if necessary.
The transliteration is indicated in
ISO 15919.
Consonants
;Notes
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
Numerals
Notes
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
Brahmi (; ; 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 as 'lath' ...
. In the northern group, the
Gupta script was very influential, and in the southern group the
Vatteluttu
''Vatteluttu,'' popularly romanised as ''Vattezhuthu'' ( ta, வட்டெழுத்து, ' and ml, വട്ടെഴുത്ത്, ', ), was a syllabic alphabet of south India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala) and Sri Lanka used for writing t ...
and
Kadamba/
Pallava scripts with the
spread of Buddhism sent Brahmic scripts throughout Southeast Asia.
Northern Brahmic
*
Gupta, 4th century
**
Sharada
***
Landa
****
Gurmukhi
****
Khojki
****
Khudabadi
****
Mahajani
****
Multani
***
Takri
****
Dogri
Dogri ( Name Dogra Akkhar: ; Devanagari: डोगरी; Nastaliq: ; ) is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, India, with smaller groups of speakers in adjoining regions of western Himachal Prad ...
****
Sirmauri
**
Siddhaṃ
***
Nagari
****
Devanagari
****
Modi
Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current Prime Minister of India since 2014. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from ...
****
Gujarati
****
Nandinagari
Nandinagari is a Brahmic script derived from the Nāgarī script which appeared in the 7th century AD.George Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, , page 75 This script and its variants were used in the central Dec ...
****
Kaithi
Kaithi (), also called Kayathi () or Kayasthi (), is a historical Brahmic script that was used widely in parts of Northern and Eastern India, primarily in the present-day states of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar. In particular, it was us ...
*****
Sylheti Nagari
Sylheti Nagri or Sylheti Nagari ( syl, , ISO: , ), known in classical manuscripts as Sylhet Nagri (, ''Sileṭ Nagri'') amongst many other names (see below), was an Indic script used to write the Sylheti language and Eastern Bengali languages ...
***
Kamarupi
****
Assamese
***
Gaudi
****
Bengali–Assamese (Eastern Nagari)
*****
Assamese
*****
Bengali
****
Tirhuta (Mithilakshar)
****
Odia
***
Nepalese
****
Bhujimol
****
Ranjana
*****
Soyombo
****
Pracalit
**
Tibetan
***
Meetei Mayek
***
Lepcha
****
Limbu
***
Khema
Khema (Pali: Khemā; Sanskrit: Kṣemā) was a Buddhist ''bhikkhuni'', or nun, who was one of the top female disciples of the Buddha. She is considered the first of the Buddha's two chief female disciples, along with Uppalavanna. Khema was b ...
***
'Phags-pa
****
Zanabazar square
***
Marchen
**** Marchung
**** Pungs-chen
**** Pungs-chung
**** Drusha
**
Dives Akuru
Dhives Akuru, later called Dhivehi Akuru (meaning "letters" letters) is a script formerly used for the Maldivian language. The name can be alternatively spelled Dives Akuru or Divehi Akuru, as the "d" is unaspirated.
History
Dhives Akuru de ...
**
Kalinga
**
Bhaiksuki
*
Tocharian (Slanting Brahmi)
Southern Brahmic
*
Tamil-Brahmi, 2nd century BC
**
Pallava
***
Tamil
***
Grantha
****
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
****
Tigalari
****
Saurashtra
***
Khmer
****
Khom Thai
**** ''Proto-Tai script?''
*****
Sukhothai
******
Thai
******
Fakkham
*******
Thai Noi
********
Lao
*****
Tai Viet
*****
Dai Don
*****
Lai Tay
*****
Lai Pao
***
Cham
Cham or CHAM may refer to:
Ethnicities and languages
*Chams, people in Vietnam and Cambodia
**Cham language, the language of the Cham people
***Cham script
*** Cham (Unicode block), a block of Unicode characters of the Cham script
*Cham Albania ...
***
Kawi
****
Balinese
****
Batak
****
Buda
****
Javanese
****
Old Sundanese
*****
Sundanese
****
Lampung
Lampung ( Lampung: ), officially the Province of Lampung ( id, Provinsi Lampung) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Sumatra. It has a short border with the province of Bengkulu to the northwest, and ...
****
Lontara
Lontara or lontaraq () are Bugis-Makassar Palm-leaf manuscript, palm-leaf manuscripts that record knowledge on such topics as history, science, Norm (social), custom, and laws. The term originates from the Javanese language, Javanese/Malay langua ...
****
Makasar
****
Rencong
The rencong (Acehnese language, Acehnese: ''reuncong'', Dutch spelling: ''rentjong'', British spelling: ''renchong'') is a type of knife originating in Aceh, Indonesia. Originally a fighting weapon, it is most often seen today in the martial art ...
****
Rejang
****
Baybayin
*****
Buhid
*****
Hanunó'o
*****
Tagbanwa
*****
Kulitan
Kulitan (Spanish: ''cúlitan''), also known as súlat Kapampángan and pamagkulit, is one of the various indigenous suyat writing systems in the Philippines. It was used for writing Kapampangan, a language mainly spoken in Central Luzon, until it ...
*****
Basahan
Basahan script, also known as Guhit, is the native name used by Bicolanos to refer to Baybayin.
The word Basahan is already recorded in a book entitled Vocabulario de la Lengua Bicol by Marcos de Lisboa in 1628 which states that it has three ...
***
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
''Vatteluttu,'' popularly romanised as ''Vattezhuthu'' ( ta, வட்டெழுத்து, ' and ml, വട്ടെഴുത്ത്, ', ), was a syllabic alphabet of south India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala) and Sri Lanka used for writing t ...
***
Kolezhuthu
***
Malayanma
*
Sinhala
*
Bhattiprolu
Bhattiprolu is a village in Guntur district of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is the headquarters of Bhattiprolu mandal in Tenali revenue division. The ''Buddhist stupa'' in the village is one of the centrally protected monuments of ...
**
Kadamba
***
Telugu-Kannada
The Kannada–Telugu script (or Telugu–kannada script) was a writing system used in Southern India. Despite some differences, the scripts used for the Kannada and Telugu languages remain quite similar and highly mutually intelligible.
Histor ...
****
Kannada
*****
Goykanadi
or Kandavī is a Brahmic script that was once used in the territory of Goa to write Konkani and sometimes Marathi in the Konkan coast. Similarly, it was used by the trading Saraswat and Daivajna families along with the Modi script to mai ...
****
Telugu
Unicode
As of
Unicode version 15.0, the following Brahmic scripts have been encoded:
See also
*
Devanagari transliteration
Devanagari is an Indian script used for many languages of India and Nepal, including Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit. There are several somewhat similar methods of transliteration from Devanagari to the Roman script (a process sometimes ...
**
International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
**
National Library at Kolkata romanisation
The National Library of India, National Library at Kolkata romanisationSee p 24-26 for table comparing Indic languages,
and p 33-34 for Devanagari alphabet listing. is a widely used transliteration scheme in dictionaries and grammars of Language ...
*
Bharati Braille, the unified braille assignments of Indian languages
*
Indus script
The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script, is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not they constituted ...
– symbols produced by the
Indus Valley civilisation
*
ISCII
Indian Script Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) is a coding scheme for representing various writing systems of India. It encodes the main Indic scripts and a Roman transliteration. The supported scripts are: Bengali–Assamese, Devanagar ...
– the coding scheme specifically designed to represent Indic scripts
References
External links
Online Tool which supports Conversion between various Brahmic ScriptsWindows Indic Script SupportAn Introduction to Indic ScriptsEnhanced Indic TransliteratorTransliterate from romanised script to Indian Languages.
A means to transliterate from romanised to Unicode Indian scripts.
Imperial Brahmi Font and Text-Editor*
ttp://padma.mozdev.org/ Padma: Transformer for Indic Scripts – a
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...
add-on
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brahmic Family Of Scripts