The Kutila inscription of Bareilly is an inscription in the

Kutila script The Kutila inscription of Bareilly is an inscription in the Kutila script (कुटिल लिपि) dating to 992 CE that provides crucial evidence in tracing the shared descent of the Devanagari and Bengali-Assamese scripts of Northern a ...

(कुटिल लिपि) dating to 992 CE that provides crucial evidence in tracing the shared descent of the

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...

and Bengali-Assamese scripts of

Northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ra ...

and Eastern

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

from the predecessor

Gupta script The Gupta script (sometimes referred to as Gupta Brahmi script or Late Brahmi script)Sharma, Ram. '' 'Brahmi Script' ''. Delhi: BR Publishing Corp, 2002 was used for writing Sanskrit and is associated with the Gupta Empire of the Indian subcon ...

. The writing was found on a stone unearthed in Bareilly district in the

United Provinces of Agra and Oudh The United Provinces of Agra and Oudh was a province of India under the British Raj, which existed from 1902 to 1921; the official name was shortened by the Government of India Act 1935 to United Provinces (UP), by which the province had been ...

(modern-day

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...

). The inscription proclaims that it was created by an engraver from Kannauj who was "proficient in the Kutila character". It also includes the date of the inscription, Vikram Samvat 1049, which corresponds to 992 CE. The word ''Kutila'' (कुटिल) means ''crooked'' in the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

language, and it is assumed that the name came from the curving shapes of Kutila letters, distinct from the straighter lines of the

Brahmi 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 ...

and Gupta scripts. The

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

encoding for Siddham is to serve as a unifying block for all regional variants of the script, such as Siddhamātṛkā and Kuṭila. The Siddham glyphs are based upon Japanese forms of Siddham characters on account of active usage of the script by Japanese Buddhist communities.

References

{{reflist Brahmic scripts Archaeology of India Indian inscriptions History of Uttar Pradesh History of Bareilly

See also

References