Brahmi ( ; ;
ISO
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries.
Me ...
: ''Brāhmī'') is a
writing system
A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...
from
ancient India
Anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. The earliest known human remains in South Asia date to 30,000 years ago. Sedentism, Sedentariness began in South Asia around 7000 BCE; ...
[. "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' or 'Lat', 'Southern Aśokan', 'Indian Pali', 'Mauryan', and so on. The application to it of the name Brahmi 'sc. lipi'' which stands at the head of the Buddhist and Jaina script lists, was first suggested by T rriende Lacouperie, who noted that in the Chinese Buddhist encyclopedia ''Fa yiian chu lin'' the scripts whose names corresponded to the Brahmi and Kharosthi of the ''Lalitavistara'' are described as written from left to right and from right to left, respectively. He therefore suggested that the name Brahmi should refer to the left-to-right 'Indo-Pali' script of the Aśokan pillar inscriptions, and Kharosthi to the right-to-left 'Bactro-Pali' script of the rock inscriptions from the northwest."] that appeared as a fully developed script in the
3rd century BCE.
[. "... the Brahmi script appeared in the third century BCE as a fully developed pan-Indian national script (sometimes used as a second script even within the proper territory of Kharosthi in the north-west) and continued to play this role throughout history, becoming the parent of all of the modern Indic scripts both within India and beyond. Thus, with the exceptions of the Indus script in the protohistoric period, of Kharosthi in the northwest in the ancient period, and of the Perso–Arabic and European scripts in the medieval and modern periods, respectively, the history of writing in India is virtually synonymous with the history of the Brahmi script and its derivatives."] Its descendants, the
Brahmic scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...
, continue to be used today across
South
South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both west and east.
Etymology
The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...
and
Southeastern Asia.
Brahmi is an
abugida
An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...
and uses a system of
diacritical marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. The writing system only went through relatively minor evolutionary changes from the
Mauryan
The Maurya Empire was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in South Asia with its power base in Magadha. Founded by Chandragupta Maurya around c. 320 BCE, it existed in loose-knit fashion until 185 BCE. The primary sourc ...
period (3rd century BCE) down to the early
Gupta period (4th century CE), and it is thought that as late as the 4th century CE, a literate person could still read and understand Mauryan inscriptions.
Sometime thereafter, the ability to read the original Brahmi script was lost. The earliest (indisputably dated) and best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut
edicts of Ashoka
The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of more than thirty inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, attributed to Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 268 BCE to 2 ...
in north-central India, dating to 250–232 BCE.
The decipherment of Brahmi became the focus of European scholarly attention in the early 19th-century during
East India Company rule in India
Company rule in India (also known as the Company Raj, from Hindi , ) refers to regions of the Indian subcontinent under the control of the British East India Company (EIC). The EIC, founded in 1600, established its first trading post in India ...
, in particular in the
Asiatic Society of Bengal
The Asiatic Society is an organisation founded during the Company rule in India to enhance and further the cause of " Oriental research" (in this case, research into India and the surrounding regions). It was founded by the philologist Will ...
in
Calcutta
Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...
.
Brahmi was deciphered by
James Prinsep
James Prinsep (20 August 1799 – 22 April 1840) was an English scholar, Orientalism, orientalist and antiquary. He was the founding editor of the ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal'' and is best remembered for deciphering the Kharost ...
, the secretary of the Society, in a series of scholarly articles in the Society's journal in the 1830s.
His breakthroughs built on the epigraphic work of
Christian Lassen,
Edwin Norris,
H. H. Wilson and
Alexander Cunningham
Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham (23 January 1814 – 28 November 1893) was a British Army engineer with the Bengal Sappers who later took an interest in the history and archaeology of India. In 1861, he was appointed to the newly crea ...
, among others.
[. "Prinsep came to India in 1819 as assistant to the assay master of the Calcutta Mint and remained until 1838, when he returned to England for reasons of health. During this period Prinsep made a long series of discoveries in the fields of epigraphy and numismatics as well as in the natural sciences and technical fields. But he is best known for his breakthroughs in the decipherment of the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts.... Although Prinsep's final decipherment was ultimately to rely on paleographic and contextual rather than statistical methods, it is still no less a tribute to his genius that he should have thought to apply such modern techniques to his problem."]
The origin of the script is still much debated, with most scholars stating that Brahmi was derived from or at least influenced by one or more contemporary
Semitic scripts
The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found ...
. Some scholars favour the idea of an indigenous origin or connection to the much older and as yet undeciphered
Indus script
The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley 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 whe ...
but the evidence is insufficient at best.
Brahmi was at one time referred to in English as the "pin-man" script, likening the characters to
stick figure
Stick Figure is an American reggae and dub band founded in 2005. The group has released eight full-length albums and one instrumental album (Prince Fatty Presents), all of which were written and produced by frontman and self-taught multi-instr ...
s. It was known by a variety of other names, including "lath", "Laṭ", "Southern Aśokan", "Indian Pali" or "Mauryan" , until the 1880s when
Albert Étienne Jean Baptiste Terrien de Lacouperie, based on an observation by
Gabriel Devéria, associated it with the Brahmi script, the first in a list of scripts mentioned in the ''
Lalitavistara Sūtra
The ''Lalitavistara Sūtra'' is a Sanskrit Mahayana sutras, Mahayana Buddhist sutra that tells the story of Gautama Buddha from the time of his descent from Tushita until his first sermon in the Deer Park at Sarnath near Varanasi. The term ''La ...
''. Thence the name was adopted in the influential work of
Georg Bühler, albeit in the variant form "Brahma".
The
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 ...
of the 5th century is sometimes called "Late Brahmi". From the 6th century onward, the Brahmi script diversified into numerous local variants, grouped as the
Brahmic family of scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...
. Dozens of modern scripts used across South and South East Asia have descended from Brahmi, making it one of the world's most influential writing traditions. One survey found 198 scripts that ultimately derive from it.
Among the
inscriptions of Ashoka () written in the Brahmi script a few numerals were found, which have come to be called the
Brahmi numerals
Brahmi numerals are a numeral system attested in the Indian subcontinent from the 3rd century BCE. It is the direct graphic ancestor of the modern Hindu–Arabic numeral system. However, the Brahmi numeral system was conceptually distinct from ...
. The numerals are additive and multiplicative and, therefore, not
place value
Place may refer to:
Geography
* Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population
** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government
* "Place", a type of street or road name
** O ...
; it is not known if their underlying system of numeration has a connection to the Brahmi script. But in the second half of the 1st millennium CE, some inscriptions in India and Southeast Asia written in scripts derived from the Brahmi did include numerals that are decimal place value, and constitute the earliest existing material examples of the
Hindu–Arabic numeral system
The Hindu–Arabic numeral system (also known as the Indo-Arabic numeral system, Hindu numeral system, and Arabic numeral system) is a positional notation, positional Decimal, base-ten numeral system for representing integers; its extension t ...
, now in use throughout the world. The underlying system of numeration, however, was older, as the earliest attested orally transmitted example dates to the middle of the 3rd century CE in a
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
prose adaptation of a lost
Greek work on astrology.
Texts
The Brahmi script is mentioned in the ancient Indian texts of the three major
Dharmic religions
Indian religions, sometimes also termed Dharmic religions or Indic religions, are the religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent. These religions, which include Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism,Adams, C. J."Classification o ...
:
Hinduism
Hinduism () is an Hypernymy and hyponymy, umbrella term for a range of Indian religions, Indian List of religions and spiritual traditions#Indian religions, religious and spiritual traditions (Sampradaya, ''sampradaya''s) that are unified ...
,
Jainism
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religions, Indian religion whose three main pillars are nonviolence (), asceticism (), and a rejection of all simplistic and one-sided views of truth and reality (). Jainism traces its s ...
, and
Buddhism
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
, as well as their
Chinese translations.
[, Quote: "(...) a passage of the ''Lalitavistara'' which describes the first visit of Prince Siddhartha, the future Buddha, to the writing school..." (page 6); "In the account of Prince Siddhartha's first visit to the writing school, extracted by Professor Terrien de la Couperie from the Chinese translation of the Lalitavistara of 308 CE, there occurs besides the mention of the sixty-four alphabets, known also from the printed Sanskrit text, the utterance of the Master Visvamitra ] For example, the 10th chapter of the ''
Lalitavistara Sūtra
The ''Lalitavistara Sūtra'' is a Sanskrit Mahayana sutras, Mahayana Buddhist sutra that tells the story of Gautama Buddha from the time of his descent from Tushita until his first sermon in the Deer Park at Sarnath near Varanasi. The term ''La ...
'' (c. 200–300 CE), titled the ''Lipisala samdarshana parivarta,'' lists 64 ''
lipi'' (scripts), with the Brahmi script starting the list. The ''Lalitavistara Sūtra'' states that young Siddhartha, the future
Gautama Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),*
*
*
was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist lege ...
(~500 BCE), mastered philology, Brahmi and other scripts from the
Brahmin
Brahmin (; ) is a ''Varna (Hinduism), varna'' (theoretical social classes) within Hindu society. The other three varnas are the ''Kshatriya'' (rulers and warriors), ''Vaishya'' (traders, merchants, and farmers), and ''Shudra'' (labourers). Th ...
Lipikāra and Deva Vidyāsiṃha at a school.
A list of eighteen ancient scripts is found in the
early Jaina texts, such as the ''
Paṇṇavaṇā Sūtra'' (2nd century BCE) and the ''
Samavāyāṅga Sūtra'' (3rd century BCE).
These Jain script lists include Brahmi at number 1 and Kharoṣṭhi at number 4, but also Javanaliya (probably
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
) and others not found in the Buddhist lists.
Origins
While the contemporary
Kharoṣṭhī
Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara, Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara along ...
script is widely accepted to be a derivation of the
Aramaic alphabet
The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian peoples throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects und ...
, the genesis of the Brahmi script is less straightforward. Salomon reviewed existing theories in 1998, while Falk provided an overview in 1993.
Early theories proposed a
pictographic
A pictogram (also pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto) is a graphical symbol that conveys meaning through its visual resemblance to a physical object. Pictograms are used in systems of writing and visual communication. A pictography is a wri ...
-
acrophonic
Acrophony (; + 'sound') is the naming of grapheme, letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the names of the letters α, β, γ, δ, are spell ...
origin for the Brahmi script, on the model of the
Egyptian hieroglyphic
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined Ideogram, ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct char ...
script. These ideas however have lost credence, as they are "purely imaginative and speculative".
Similar ideas have tried to connect the Brahmi script with the
Indus script
The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley 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 whe ...
, but they remain unproven, and particularly suffer from the fact that the Indus script is as yet undeciphered.

The mainstream view is that Brahmi has an origin in
Semitic scripts
The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found ...
(usually Aramaic). This is accepted by the vast majority of script scholars since the publications by
Albrecht Weber
Friedrich Albrecht Weber (; 17 February 1825 – 30 November 1901) was a Prussian-German Indologist and historian who studied the history of Jainism in India. Some older sources have the first and middle names interchanged.
Biography
Weber was ...
(1856) and
Georg Bühler's ''On the origin of the Indian Brahma alphabet'' (1895).
Bühler's ideas have been particularly influential, though even by the 1895 date of his opus on the subject, he could identify no fewer than five competing theories of the origin, one positing an indigenous origin and the others deriving it from various Semitic models.
The most disputed point about the origin of the Brahmi script has long been whether it was a purely indigenous development or was borrowed or derived from scripts that originated outside India. Goyal (1979) noted that most proponents of the indigenous view are fringe Indian scholars, whereas the theory of Semitic origin is held by "nearly all" Western scholars, and Salomon agrees with Goyal that there has been "nationalist bias" and "imperialist bias" on the two respective sides of the debate. In spite of this, the view of indigenous development had been prevalent among British scholars writing prior to Bühler: a passage by
Alexander Cunningham
Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham (23 January 1814 – 28 November 1893) was a British Army engineer with the Bengal Sappers who later took an interest in the history and archaeology of India. In 1861, he was appointed to the newly crea ...
, one of the earliest indigenous origin proponents, suggests that, in his time, the indigenous origin was a preference of British scholars in opposition to the "unknown Western" origin preferred by
continental
Continental may refer to:
Places
* Continental, Arizona, a small community in Pima County, Arizona, US
* Continental, Ohio, a small town in Putnam County, US
Arts and entertainment
* ''Continental'' (album), an album by Saint Etienne
* Continen ...
scholars. Cunningham in the seminal ''Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum'' of 1877 speculated that Brahmi characters were derived from, among other things, a pictographic principle based on the human body, but Bühler noted that, by 1891, Cunningham considered the origins of the script uncertain.
Most scholars believe that Brahmi was likely derived from or influenced by a Semitic script model, with Aramaic being a leading candidate.
However, the issue is not settled due to the lack of direct evidence and unexplained differences between Aramaic, Kharoṣṭhī, and Brahmi. Though Brahmi and the
Kharoṣṭhī
Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara, Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara along ...
script share some general features, the differences between the Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts are "much greater than their similarities", and "the overall differences between the two render a direct linear development connection unlikely", states Richard Salomon.
Virtually all authors accept that regardless of the origins, the differences between the Indian script and those proposed to have influenced it are significant. The degree of Indian development of the Brahmi script in both the graphic form and the structure has been extensive. It is also widely accepted that theories about the
grammar of the Vedic language probably had a strong influence on this development. Some authors – both Western and Indian – suggest that Brahmi was borrowed or inspired by a Semitic script, invented in a short few years during the reign of Ashoka, and then used widely for Ashokan inscriptions. In contrast, some authors reject the idea of foreign influence.
Bruce Trigger states that Brahmi likely emerged from the Aramaic script (with extensive local development), but there is no evidence of a direct common source.
According to Trigger, Brahmi was in use before the Ashoka pillars, at least by the 4th or 5th century BCE in
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
and India, while Kharoṣṭhī was used only in northwest South Asia (eastern parts of modern Afghanistan and neighboring regions of Pakistan) for a while before it died out in the third century.
According to Salomon, evidence of the use of Kharoṣṭhī is found primarily in Buddhist records and those of Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian, Indo-Parthian, and Kushana dynasty era.
Justeson and Stephens proposed that this inherent vowel system in Brahmi and Kharoṣṭhī developed by transmission of a Semitic
abjad
An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...
through the recitation of its letter values. The idea is that learners of the source alphabet recite the sounds by combining the consonant with an unmarked vowel, e.g. , and in the process of borrowing into another language, these syllables are taken to be the sound values of the symbols. They also accepted the idea that Brahmi was based on a North Semitic model.
Semitic hypothesis
Many scholars link the origin of Brahmi to Semitic script models, particularly Aramaic. The explanation of how this might have happened, the particular Semitic script, and the chronology of the derivation have been the subject of much debate. Bühler followed
Albrecht Weber
Friedrich Albrecht Weber (; 17 February 1825 – 30 November 1901) was a Prussian-German Indologist and historian who studied the history of Jainism in India. Some older sources have the first and middle names interchanged.
Biography
Weber was ...
in connecting it particularly to Phoenician, and proposed an early 8th century BCE date for the borrowing. A link to the
South Semitic scripts, a less prominent branch of the Semitic script family, has occasionally been proposed, but has not gained much acceptance. Finally, the Aramaic script being the prototype for Brahmi has been the more preferred hypothesis because of its geographic proximity to the Indian subcontinent, and its influence likely arising because Aramaic was the bureaucratic language of the Achaemenid empire. However, this hypothesis does not explain the mystery of why two very different scripts, Kharoṣṭhī and Brahmi, developed from the same Aramaic. A possible explanation might be that Ashoka created an imperial script for his edicts, but there is no evidence to support this conjecture.
The chart below shows the close resemblance that Brahmi has with the first four letters of Semitic script, the first column representing the
Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions fo ...
.
Bühler's hypothesis
According to the Semitic hypothesis as laid out by Bühler in 1898, the oldest Brahmi inscriptions were derived from a Phoenician prototype. Salomon states Bühler's arguments are "weak historical, geographical, and chronological justifications for a Phoenician prototype". Discoveries made since Bühler's proposal, such as of six Mauryan inscriptions in Aramaic, suggest Bühler's proposal about Phoenician as weak. It is more likely that Aramaic, which was virtually certainly the prototype for Kharoṣṭhī, also may have been the basis for Brahmi. However, it is unclear why the ancient Indians would have developed two very different scripts.
According to Bühler, Brahmi added symbols for certain sounds not found in Semitic languages, and either deleted or repurposed symbols for Aramaic sounds not found in Prakrit. For example, Aramaic lacks the
phonetic retroflex feature that appears among Prakrit
dental stops, such as , and in Brahmi the symbols of the retroflex and non-retroflex consonants are graphically very similar, as if both had been derived from a single prototype. (See
Tibetan alphabet
The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system, or ''abugida'', forming a part of the Brahmic scripts, and used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. Its exact origins a ...
for a similar later development.) Aramaic did not have Brahmi's
aspirated consonant
In phonetics, aspiration is a strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with t ...
s (, , etc.), whereas Brahmi did not have Aramaic's
emphatic consonant
In Semitic linguistics, an emphatic consonant is an obstruent consonant which originally contrasted, and often still contrasts, with an analogous voiced or voiceless obstruent by means of a secondary articulation. In specific Semitic languages, ...
s ('), and it appears that these unneeded emphatic letters filled in for some of Brahmi's aspirates: Aramaic ''q'' for Brahmi ''kh,'' Aramaic ''ṭ'' (Θ) for Brahmi ''th'' (), etc. And just where Aramaic did not have a corresponding emphatic stop, ''p'', Brahmi seems to have doubled up for the corresponding aspirate: Brahmi ''p'' and ''ph'' are graphically very similar, as if taken from the same source in Aramaic ''p''. Bühler saw a systematic derivational principle for the other aspirates ''ch'', ''jh'', ''ph'', ''bh'', and ''dh'', which involved adding a curve or upward hook to the right side of the character (which has been speculated to derive from ''h'',

), while ''d'' and ''ṭ'' (not to be confused with the Semitic emphatic ) were derived by back formation from ''dh'' and ''ṭh''.
The attached table lists the correspondences between Brahmi and North Semitic scripts.
Bühler states that both Phoenician and Brahmi had three voiceless
sibilant
Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate 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 w ...
s, but because the alphabetical ordering was lost, the correspondences among them are not clear. Bühler was able to suggest Brahmi derivatives corresponding to all of the 22 North Semitic characters, though clearly, as Bühler himself recognized, some are more confident than others. He tended to place much weight on phonetic congruence as a guideline, for example connecting ''c''

to
tsade
Tsade (also spelled , , , , tzadi, sadhe, tzaddik) is the eighteenth Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician ''ṣādē'' 𐤑, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''ṣādī'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''� ...
𐤑 rather than
kaph
Kaph (also spelled kaf) is the eleventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''kāp'' 𐤊, Hebrew ''kāp̄'' , Aramaic ''kāp'' 𐡊, Syriac ''kāp̄'' ܟ, and Arabic ''kāf'' (in abjadi order). It is also related to the Anc ...
𐤊, as preferred by many of his predecessors.
One of the key problems with a Phoenician derivation is the lack of evidence for historical contact with Phoenicians in the relevant period. Bühler explained this by proposing that the initial borrowing of Brahmi characters dates back considerably earlier than the earliest known evidence, as far back as 800 BCE, contemporary with the Phoenician glyph forms that he mainly compared. Bühler cited a near-modern practice of writing Brahmic scripts informally without vowel diacritics as a possible continuation of this earlier abjad-like stage in development.
The weakest forms of the Semitic hypothesis are similar to Gnanadesikan's
trans-cultural diffusion
In cultural anthropology and cultural geography, cultural diffusion, as conceptualized by Leo Frobenius in his 1897/98 publication ''Der westafrikanische Kulturkreis'', is the spread of culture, cultural items—such as ideas, fashion, styles, rel ...
view of the development of Brahmi and Kharoṣṭhī, in which the idea of alphabetic sound representation was learned from the Aramaic-speaking Persians, but much of the writing system was a novel development tailored to the phonology of Prakrit.
Further evidence cited in favor of Persian influence has been the Hultzsch proposal in 1925 that the Prakrit/Sanskrit word for writing itself, ''lipi'' is similar to the Old Persian word ''dipi'', suggesting a probable borrowing.
A few of the Ashoka edicts from the region nearest the Persian empire use ''dipi'' as the Prakrit word for writing, which appears as ''lipi'' elsewhere, and this geographic distribution has long been taken, at least back to Bühler's time, as an indication that the standard ''lipi'' form is a later alteration that appeared as it diffused away from the Persian sphere of influence. Persian ''dipi'' itself is thought to be an
Elamite
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Scythic, Median, Amardian, Anshanian and Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was recorded in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite i ...
loanword.
Greek-Semitic model hypothesis

Falk's 1993 book is a study on writing in ancient India,
and has a section on the origins of Brahmi. It features an extensive review of the literature up to that time. Falk sees the basic
writing system
A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...
of Brahmi as being derived from the Kharoṣṭhī script, itself a derivative of Aramaic. At the time of his writing, the Ashoka edicts were the oldest confidently dateable examples of Brahmi, and he perceives in them "a clear development in language from a faulty linguistic style to a well honed one" over time, which he takes to indicate that the script had been recently developed.
Falk deviates from the mainstream of opinion in seeing Greek as also being a significant source for Brahmi. On this point particularly, Salomon disagrees with Falk, and after presenting evidence of very different methodology between Greek and Brahmi notation of vowel quantity, he states "it is doubtful whether Brahmi derived even the basic concept from a Greek prototype". Further, adds Salomon, in a "limited sense Brahmi can be said to be derived from Kharosthi, but in terms of the actual forms of the characters, the differences between the two Indian scripts are much greater than the similarities".
Falk also dated the origin of Kharoṣṭhī to no earlier than 325 BCE, based on a proposed connection to the Greek conquest. Salomon questions Falk's arguments as to the date of Kharoṣṭhī and writes that it is "speculative at best and hardly constitutes firm grounds for a late date for Kharoṣṭhī. The stronger argument for this position is that we have no specimen of the script before the time of Ashoka, nor any direct evidence of intermediate stages in its development; but of course this does not mean that such earlier forms did not exist, only that, if they did exist, they have not survived, presumably because they were not employed for monumental purposes before Ashoka".
Unlike Bühler, Falk does not provide details of which and how the presumptive prototypes may have been mapped to the individual characters of Brahmi. Further, states Salomon, Falk accepts there are anomalies in phonetic value and diacritics in Brahmi script that are not found in the presumed Kharoṣṭhī script source. Falk attempts to explain these anomalies by reviving the Greek influence hypothesis, a hypothesis that had previously fallen out of favor.
Hartmut Scharfe, in his 2002 review of Kharoṣṭī and Brāhmī scripts, concurs with Salomon's questioning of Falk's proposal, and states, "the pattern of the phonemic analysis of the Sanskrit language achieved by the Vedic scholars is much closer to the Brahmi script than the Greek alphabet".
As of 2018, Harry Falk refined his view by affirming that Brahmi was developed from scratch in a rational way at the time of
Ashoka
Ashoka, also known as Asoka or Aśoka ( ; , ; – 232 BCE), and popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was List of Mauryan emperors, Emperor of Magadha from until #Death, his death in 232 BCE, and the third ruler from the Mauryan dynast ...
, by consciously combining the advantages of the pre-existing
Greek script
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as w ...
and northern
Kharosthi
Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara alongside vari ...
script.
Greek-style letter types were selected for their "broad, upright and symmetrical form", and writing from left to right was also adopted for its convenience.
On the other hand, the Kharosthi treatment of vowels was retained, with its inherent vowel "a", derived from
Aramaic
Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...
, and stroke additions to represent other vowel signs.
In addition, a new system of combining consonants vertically to represent complex sounds was also developed.
Indigenous origin hypothesis
The possibility of an indigenous origin such as a connection to the
Indus script
The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script and the Indus Valley 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 whe ...
is supported by some Western and Indian scholars and writers. The theory that there are similarities to the Indus script was suggested by early European scholars such as the archaeologist
John Marshall
John Marshall (September 24, 1755July 6, 1835) was an American statesman, jurist, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the fourth chief justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835. He remai ...
and the Assyriologist
Stephen Langdon. G. R. Hunter in his book ''The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and Its Connection with Other Scripts'' (1934) proposed a derivation of the Brahmi alphabets from the Indus script, the match being considerably higher than that of Aramaic in his estimation.
British archaeologist
Raymond Allchin stated that there is a powerful argument against the idea that the Brahmi script has Semitic borrowing because the whole structure and conception is quite different. He at one time suggested that the origin may have been purely indigenous with the Indus script as its predecessor. However, Allchin and Erdosy later in 1995 expressed the opinion that there was as yet insufficient evidence to resolve the question.

Today the indigenous origin hypothesis is more commonly promoted by non-specialists, such as the computer scientist
Subhash Kak
Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharla ...
, the spiritual teachers
David Frawley and
Georg Feuerstein
Georg Feuerstein (27 May 1947 – 25 August 2012) was a Germans, German Indology, Indologist specializing in the philosophy and practice of Yoga. Feuerstein authored over 30 books on mysticism, Yoga, Tantra, and Hinduism. He translated, among othe ...
, and the social anthropologist
Jack Goody
Sir John Rankine Goody (27 July 1919 – 16 July 2015) was an English social anthropologist. He was a prominent lecturer at Cambridge University, and was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1973 to 1984.
Among his main publica ...
.
Subhash Kak disagrees with the proposed Semitic origins of the script, instead stating that the interaction between the Indic and the Semitic worlds before the rise of the Semitic scripts might imply a reverse process. However, the chronology thus presented and the notion of an unbroken tradition of literacy is opposed by a majority of academics who support an indigenous origin. Evidence for a continuity between Indus and Brahmi has also been seen in graphic similarities between Brahmi and the late Indus script, where the ten most common ligatures correspond with the form of one of the ten most common glyphs in Brahmi. There is also corresponding evidence of continuity in the use of numerals. Further support for this continuity comes from statistical analysis of the relationship carried out by Das.
Salomon considered simple graphic similarities between characters to be insufficient evidence for a connection without knowing the phonetic values of the Indus script, though he found apparent similarities in patterns of compounding and diacritical modification to be "intriguing". However, he felt that it was premature to explain and evaluate them due to the large chronological gap between the scripts and the thus far indecipherable nature of the Indus script.
The main obstacle to this idea is the lack of evidence for writing during the millennium and a half between the collapse of the
Indus Valley civilisation
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation, was a Bronze Age civilisation in the Northwestern South Asia, northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 Common Era, BCE to 1300 BCE, and in i ...
around 1500 BCE and the first widely accepted appearance of Brahmi in the 3rd or 4th centuries BCE. Iravathan Mahadevan makes the point that even if one takes the latest dates of 1500 BCE for the Indus script and earliest claimed dates of Brahmi around 500 BCE, a thousand years still separates the two.
Furthermore, there is no accepted decipherment of the Indus script, which makes theories based on claimed decipherments tenuous.
A promising possible link between the Indus script and later writing traditions may be in the
megalithic graffiti symbols of the South Indian megalithic culture, which may have some overlap with the Indus symbol inventory and persisted in use up at least through the appearance of the Brahmi and scripts up into the third century CE. These graffiti usually appear singly, though on occasion may be found in groups of two or three, and are thought to have been family, clan, or religious symbols. In 1935, C. L. Fábri proposed that symbols found on Mauryan
punch-marked coins were remnants of the Indus script that had survived the collapse of the Indus civilization.
Another form of the indigenous origin theory is that Brahmi was invented ''ex nihilo'', entirely independently from either Semitic models or the Indus script, though Salomon found these theories to be wholly speculative in nature.
Foreign origination
Pāṇini
(; , ) was a Sanskrit grammarian, logician, philologist, and revered scholar in ancient India during the mid-1st millennium BCE, dated variously by most scholars between the 6th–5th and 4th century BCE.
The historical facts of his life ar ...
(6th to 4th century BCE) mentions ''
lipi'', the Indian word for writing scripts in his definitive work on
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
grammar, the ''Ashtadhyayi''. According to Scharfe, the words ''lipi'' and ''libi'' are borrowed from the
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (I ...
''dipi'', in turn derived from Sumerian ''dup''.
To describe his own Edicts, Ashoka used the word ''
Lipī'', now generally simply translated as "writing" or "inscription". It is thought the word "lipi", which is also orthographed "dipi" in the two
Kharosthi
Kharosthi script (), also known as the Gandhari script (), was an ancient script originally developed in the Gandhara Region of modern-day Pakistan, between the 5th and 3rd century BCE. used primarily by the people of Gandhara alongside vari ...
-version of the rock edicts, comes from an
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native speakers as (I ...
prototype ''dipî'' also meaning "inscription", which is used for example by
Darius I
Darius I ( ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of West A ...
in his
Behistun inscription
The Behistun Inscription (also Bisotun, Bisitun or Bisutun; , Old Persian: Bagastana, meaning "the place of god") is a multilingual Achaemenid royal inscriptions, Achaemenid royal inscription and large rock relief on a cliff at Mount Behistun i ...
, suggesting borrowing and diffusion.
Scharfe adds that the best evidence is that no script was used or ever known in India, aside from the
Persian-dominated Northwest where
Aramaic
Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...
was used, before around 300 BCE because Indian tradition "at every occasion stresses the orality of the cultural and literary heritage",
yet Scharfe in the same book admits that "a script has been discovered in the excavations of the Indus Valley Civilization that flourished in the Indus valley and adjacent areas in the third millennium B.C. The number of different signs suggest a syllabic script, but all attempts at decipherment have been unsuccessful so far. Attempts by some Indian scholars to connect this undeciphered script with the Indian scripts in vogue from the third century B.C. onward are total failures."
Megasthenes' observations
Megasthenes
Megasthenes ( ; , died 290 BCE) was an ancient Greek historian, indologist, diplomat, ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period. He described India in his book '' Indica'', which is now lost, but has been partially reconstructe ...
, a Greek ambassador to the Mauryan court in Northeastern India only a quarter century before
Ashoka
Ashoka, also known as Asoka or Aśoka ( ; , ; – 232 BCE), and popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was List of Mauryan emperors, Emperor of Magadha from until #Death, his death in 232 BCE, and the third ruler from the Mauryan dynast ...
, noted "... and this among a people who have no written laws, who are ignorant even of writing, and regulate everything by memory." This has been variously and contentiously interpreted by many authors.
Ludo Rocher
Ludo Rocher (1926–2016) was an eminent Sanskrit scholar, and the W. Norman Brown Professor Emeritus of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Biography
Ludo Rocher was born in Hemiksem in the province of Antwerp, Belgium on 25 A ...
almost entirely dismisses Megasthenes as unreliable, questioning the wording used by Megasthenes' informant and Megasthenes' interpretation of them. Timmer considers it to reflect a misunderstanding that the Mauryans were illiterate "based upon the fact that Megasthenes rightly observed that the laws were unwritten and that oral tradition played such an important part in India."
Some proponents of the indigenous origin theories question the reliability and interpretation of comments made by Megasthenes (as quoted by
Strabo
Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...
in the ''
Geographica
The ''Geographica'' (, ''Geōgraphiká''; or , "Strabo's 17 Books on Geographical Topics") or ''Geography'', is an encyclopedia of geographical knowledge, consisting of 17 'books', written in Greek in the late 1st century BC, or early 1st cen ...
'' XV.i.53). For one, the observation may only apply in the context of the kingdom of "Sandrakottos" (Chandragupta). Elsewhere in Strabo (Strab. XV.i.39), Megasthenes is said to have noted that it was a regular custom in India for the "philosopher" caste (presumably Brahmins) to submit "anything useful which they have committed to writing" to kings, but this detail does not appear in parallel extracts of Megasthenes found in
Arrian
Arrian of Nicomedia (; Greek: ''Arrianos''; ; )
was a Greek historian, public servant, military commander, and philosopher of the Roman period.
'' The Anabasis of Alexander'' by Arrian is considered the best source on the campaigns of ...
and
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily (; 1st century BC) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek historian from Sicily. He is known for writing the monumental Universal history (genre), universal history ''Bibliotheca historica'', in forty ...
. The implication of writing per se is also not totally clear in the original Greek as the term "
συντάξῃ" (source of the English word "
syntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
") can be read as a generic "composition" or "arrangement", rather than a written composition in particular.
Nearchus
Nearchus or Nearchos (; – 300 BC) was one of the Greeks, Greek officers, a navarch, in the army of Alexander the Great. He is known for his celebrated expeditionary voyage starting from the Indus River, through the Persian Gulf and ending at t ...
, a contemporary of
Megasthenes
Megasthenes ( ; , died 290 BCE) was an ancient Greek historian, indologist, diplomat, ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period. He described India in his book '' Indica'', which is now lost, but has been partially reconstructe ...
, noted, a few decades prior, the use of cotton fabric for writing in Northern India. Indologists have variously speculated that this might have been Kharoṣṭhī or the Aramaic alphabet. Salomon regards the evidence from Greek sources to be inconclusive. Strabo himself notes this inconsistency regarding reports on the use of writing in India (XV.i.67).
Debate on time depth
Kenneth Norman (2005) suggests that Brahmi was devised over a longer period of time predating Ashoka's rule:
However, these finds are controversial, see .
He also notes that the variations seen in the
Asokan edicts would be unlikely to have emerged so quickly if Brahmi had a single origin in the chancelleries of the Mauryan Empire.
[Norman, Kenneth R. "The Development of Writing in India and its Effect upon the Pāli Canon". ''Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Südasiens'' ienna Journal of South Asian Studies vol. 36, 1992, pp. 239–249. . Accessed 11 May 2020.] He suggests a date of not later than the end of the 4th century for the development of Brahmi script in the form represented in the inscriptions, with earlier possible antecedents.
Jack Goody
Sir John Rankine Goody (27 July 1919 – 16 July 2015) was an English social anthropologist. He was a prominent lecturer at Cambridge University, and was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1973 to 1984.
Among his main publica ...
(1987) had similarly suggested that ancient India likely had a "very old culture of writing" along with its oral tradition of composing and transmitting knowledge, because the Vedic literature is too vast, consistent and complex to have been entirely created, memorized, accurately preserved and spread without a written system.
Opinions on this point, the possibility that there may not have been any writing scripts including Brahmi during the Vedic age, given the quantity and quality of the Vedic literature, are divided. While Falk (1993) disagrees with Goody, while
Walter Ong
Walter Jackson Ong, (November 30, 1912 – August 12, 2003) was an American Jesuit priest, professor of English literature, cultural and religious historian, and philosopher. His major interest was in exploring how the transition from orality ...
and John Hartley (2012) concur, not so much based on the difficulty of orally preserving the Vedic hymns, but on the basis that it is highly unlikely that Panini's grammar was composed.
Johannes Bronkhorst (2002) takes the intermediate position that the oral transmission of the Vedic hymns may well have been achieved orally, but that the development of Panini's grammar presupposes writing (consistent with a development of Indian writing in c. the 4th century BCE).
["Falk goes too far. It is fair to expect that we believe that Vedic memorisation – though without parallel in any other human society – has been able to preserve very long texts for many centuries without losing a syllable.... However, the oral composition of a work as complex as Pāṇini's grammar is not only without parallel in other human cultures, it is without parallel in India itself.... It just will not do to state that our difficulty in conceiving any such thing is our problem." ]
Origin of the name
Several divergent accounts of the origin of the name "Brahmi" (ब्राह्मी) appear in history. The term ''Brahmi'' (बाम्भी in original) appears in Indian texts in different contexts. According to the rules of the
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
language, it is a feminine word meaning literally "of Brahma" or "the female energy of the
Brahman
In Hinduism, ''Brahman'' (; IAST: ''Brahman'') connotes the highest universal principle, the ultimate reality of the universe.P. T. Raju (2006), ''Idealistic Thought of India'', Routledge, , page 426 and Conclusion chapter part XII In the ...
". In popular
Hindu
Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...
texts such as the ''
Mahabharata
The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...
'', it appears in the sense of a goddess, particularly for
Saraswati
Saraswati (, ), also spelled as Sarasvati, is one of the principal Devi, goddesses in Hinduism, revered as the goddess of knowledge, education, learning, arts, speech, poetry, music, purification, language and culture. Together with the godde ...
as the goddess of speech and elsewhere as "personified
Shakti
Shakti (Devanagari: शक्ति, IAST: Śakti; 'energy, ability, strength, effort, power, might, capability') in Hinduism, is the "Universal Power" that underlies and sustains all existence. Conceived as feminine in essence, Shakti refer ...
(energy) of
Brahma
Brahma (, ) is a Hindu god, referred to as "the Creator" within the Trimurti, the triple deity, trinity of Para Brahman, supreme divinity that includes Vishnu and Shiva.Jan Gonda (1969)The Hindu Trinity, Anthropos, Bd 63/64, H 1/2, pp. 212– ...
, the god of Hindu scriptures
Veda
FIle:Atharva-Veda samhita page 471 illustration.png, upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the ''Atharvaveda''.
The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of relig ...
and creation".
[Monier Monier Willians (1899)]
''Brahmi''
, Oxford University Press, page 742 Later Chinese Buddhist account of the 6th century CE also supports its creation to the god
Brahma
Brahma (, ) is a Hindu god, referred to as "the Creator" within the Trimurti, the triple deity, trinity of Para Brahman, supreme divinity that includes Vishnu and Shiva.Jan Gonda (1969)The Hindu Trinity, Anthropos, Bd 63/64, H 1/2, pp. 212– ...
, though
Monier Monier-Williams
Sir Monier Monier-Williams (; né Williams; 12 November 1819 – 11 April 1899) was a British scholar who was the second Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University, England. He studied, documented and taught Asian languages, especially ...
,
Sylvain Lévi and others thought it was more likely to have been given the name because it was moulded by the
Brahmin
Brahmin (; ) is a ''Varna (Hinduism), varna'' (theoretical social classes) within Hindu society. The other three varnas are the ''Kshatriya'' (rulers and warriors), ''Vaishya'' (traders, merchants, and farmers), and ''Shudra'' (labourers). Th ...
s.
Alternatively, some
Buddhist
Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...
sutras such as the ''
Lalitavistara Sūtra
The ''Lalitavistara Sūtra'' is a Sanskrit Mahayana sutras, Mahayana Buddhist sutra that tells the story of Gautama Buddha from the time of his descent from Tushita until his first sermon in the Deer Park at Sarnath near Varanasi. The term ''La ...
'' (possibly 4th century CE), list ''Brāhmī'' and ''Kharoṣṭī'' as some of the sixty-four scripts the Buddha knew as a child.
Several sutras of
Jainism
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religions, Indian religion whose three main pillars are nonviolence (), asceticism (), and a rejection of all simplistic and one-sided views of truth and reality (). Jainism traces its s ...
such as the ''Vyakhya Pragyapti Sutra'', the ''Samvayanga Sutra'' and the ''Pragyapna Sutra'' of the
Jain Agamas
Jain literature () refers to the literature of the Jain religion. It is a vast and ancient literary tradition, which was initially transmitted orally. The oldest surviving material is contained in the canonical ''Jain Agamas'', which are wri ...
include a list of 18 writing scripts known to teachers before the
Mahavira
Mahavira (Devanagari: महावीर, ), also known as Vardhamana (Devanagari: वर्धमान, ), was the 24th ''Tirthankara'' (Supreme Preacher and Ford Maker) of Jainism. Although the dates and most historical details of his lif ...
was born, the first one being ''Bambhi'' (बाम्भी) in the original
Prakrit
Prakrit ( ) is a group of vernacular classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 5th century BCE to the 12th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Ind ...
, which has been interpreted as "Bramhi".
The Brahmi script is missing from the list of 18 scripts in the surviving versions of two later Jaina Sutras, namely the ''Vishesha Avashyaka'' and the ''Kalpa Sutra''. Jain legend recounts that 18 writing scripts were taught by their first Tirthankara
Rishabhanatha
Rishabhanatha (Devanagari: ऋषभनाथ), also Rishabhadeva (Devanagari: ऋषभदेव, ), Rishabha (Devanagari: ऋषभ, ) or Ikshvaku (Devanagari: इक्ष्वाकु, ''Ikṣvāku''), is the first (Supreme preacher) ...
to his daughter Bambhi (बाम्भी); she emphasized बाम्भी as the main script as she taught others, and therefore the name Brahmi for the script comes after her name.
There is no early epigraphic proof for the expression "Brahmi script".
Ashoka
Ashoka, also known as Asoka or Aśoka ( ; , ; – 232 BCE), and popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was List of Mauryan emperors, Emperor of Magadha from until #Death, his death in 232 BCE, and the third ruler from the Mauryan dynast ...
himself when he created the first known inscriptions in the new script in the 3rd century BCE, used the expression ''dhaṃma
lipi'' (
Prakrit
Prakrit ( ) is a group of vernacular classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 5th century BCE to the 12th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Ind ...
in the Brahmi script:
𑀥𑀁𑀫𑀮𑀺𑀧𑀺, "Inscriptions of the
Dharma
Dharma (; , ) is a key concept in various Indian religions. The term ''dharma'' does not have a single, clear Untranslatability, translation and conveys a multifaceted idea. Etymologically, it comes from the Sanskrit ''dhr-'', meaning ''to hold ...
") but this is not to describe the script of his own
Edicts
An edict is a decree or announcement of a law, often associated with monarchies, but it can be under any official authority. Synonyms include "dictum" and "pronouncement". ''Edict'' derives from the Latin edictum.
Notable edicts
* Telepinu ...
.
History

The earliest known full inscriptions of Brahmi are in
Prakrit
Prakrit ( ) is a group of vernacular classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 5th century BCE to the 12th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Ind ...
, dated to be from the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE, particularly the
Edicts of Ashoka
The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of more than thirty inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, attributed to Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 268 BCE to 2 ...
, c. 250 BCE. Prakrit records predominate the epigraphic records discovered in the Indian subcontinent through about the 1st century CE. The earliest known Brahmi inscriptions in
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
are from the 1st century BCE, such as the few discovered in
Ayodhya
Ayodhya () is a city situated on the banks of the Sarayu river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ayodhya district as well as the Ayodhya division of Uttar Pradesh, India. Ayodhya became th ...
,
Ghosundi and Hathibada (both near
Chittorgarh). Ancient inscriptions have also been discovered in many North and Central Indian sites, occasionally in South India as well, that are in hybrid Sanskrit-Prakrit language called "Epigraphical Hybrid Sanskrit". These are dated by modern techniques to between the 1st and 4th centuries CE. Surviving ancient records of the Brahmi script are found as engravings on pillars, temple walls, metal plates, terracotta, coins, crystals and manuscripts.
One of the most important recent developments regarding the origin of Brahmi has been the discovery of Brahmi characters inscribed on fragments of pottery from the trading town of
Anuradhapura
Anuradhapura (, ; , ) is a major city located in the north central plain of Sri Lanka. It is the capital city of North Central Province, Sri Lanka, North Central Province and the capital of Anuradhapura District. The city lies north of the cur ...
in Sri Lanka, which have been dated to between the 6th and the early 4th century BCE, although these finds are controversial (see ). In 1996, Coningham et al.
stated that the script on the Anuradhapura inscriptions is Brahmi, but stated that the language was a
Prakrit
Prakrit ( ) is a group of vernacular classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 5th century BCE to the 12th century CE. The term Prakrit is usually applied to the middle period of Middle Ind ...
rather than a
Dravidian language
The Dravidian languages are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia.
The most commonly spoken Dravidian languages are (i ...
. The historical sequence of the specimens was interpreted to indicate an evolution in the level of stylistic refinement over several centuries, and they concluded that the Brahmi script may have arisen out of "mercantile involvement" and that the growth of
trade networks in Sri Lanka was correlated with its first appearance in the area.
Salomon in his 1998 review states that the Anuradhapura inscriptions support the theory that Brahmi existed in South Asia before the Mauryan times, with studies favoring the 4th century BCE, but some doubts remain whether the inscriptions might be intrusive into the potsherds from a later date. Indologist Harry Falk has argued that the Edicts of Ashoka represent an older stage of Brahmi, whereas certain
paleographic features of even the earliest Anuradhapura inscriptions are likely to be later, and so these potsherds may date from after 250 BCE.
More recently in 2013, Rajan and Yatheeskumar published excavations at Porunthal and
Kodumanal in
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...
, where numerous both
Tamil-Brahmi and "Prakrit-Brahmi" inscriptions and fragments have been found. Their stratigraphic analysis combined with
radiocarbon dates of paddy grains and charcoal samples indicated that inscription contexts date to as far back as the 6th and perhaps 7th centuries BCE. As these were published very recently, they have as yet not been commented on extensively in the literature. Indologist Harry Falk has criticized Rajan's claims as "particularly ill-informed"; Falk argues that some of the earliest supposed inscriptions are not Brahmi letters at all, but merely misinterpreted non-linguistic
Megalithic graffiti symbols, which were used in South India for several centuries during the pre-literate era.
Calligraphic evolution (3rd century BCE – 1st century CE)

The calligraphy of the Brahmi script remained virtually unchanged from the time of the
Maurya Empire
The Maurya Empire was a geographically extensive Iron Age historical power in South Asia with its power base in Magadha. Founded by Chandragupta Maurya around c. 320 BCE, it existed in loose-knit fashion until 185 BCE. The primary source ...
to the end of the 1st century BCE.
Around this time, the
Indo-Scythians ("
Northern Satraps"), after their establishment in northern India introduced "revolutionary changes" in the way Brahmi was written.
In the 1st century BCE, the shape of Brahmi characters became more angular, and the vertical segments of letters were equalized, a phenomenon that is clearly visible in coin legends and that made the script visually more similar to the
Greek script
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as w ...
.
In this new typeface, the letter were "neat and well-formed".
The probable introduction of ink and pen writing, with the characteristic thickenned start of each stroke generated by the usage of ink, was reproduced in the calligraphy of stone inscriptions by the creation of a triangle-shaped form at the beginning of each stroke.
This new writing style is particularly visible in the numerous dedicatory inscriptions made in
Mathura
Mathura () is a city and the administrative headquarters of Mathura district in the states and union territories of India, Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is located south-east of Delhi; and about from the town of Vrindavan. In ancient ti ...
, in association with devotional works of art.
This new calligraphy of the Brahmi script was adopted in the rest of the subcontinent of the next half century.
The "new-pen-style" initiated a rapid evolution of the script from the 1st century CE, with regional variations starting to emerge.
Decipherment
Besides a few inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic (which were only discovered in the 20th century), the
Edicts of Ashoka
The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of more than thirty inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, attributed to Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 268 BCE to 2 ...
were written in the Brahmi script and sometimes in the
Kharoshthi script in the northwest, which had both become extinct around the 4th century CE, and were yet undeciphered at the time the Edicts were discovered and investigated in the 19th century.
Inscriptions of the 6th century CE in late Brahmi were already deciphered in 1785 by
Charles Wilkins
Sir Charles Wilkins (1749 – 13 May 1836) was an English typographer and oriental studies, Orientalist, and founding member of the The Asiatic Society, Asiatic Society. He is notable as the first translator of the Bhagavad Gita into English. ...
, who published an essentially correct translation of the
Gopika Cave Inscription
__NOTOC__
The Gopika Cave Inscription, also called the Nagarjuni Hill Cave Inscription II of Anantavarman or formerly the Gya inscription (referring to the nearby city of Bodh Gaya, Gaya), is a 5th- or 6th-century CE Sanskrit inscription in Late B ...
written by the
Maukhari
The Maukhari dynasty ( Gupta script: , ''Mau-kha-ri'') was a post- Gupta dynasty who controlled the vast plains of Ganga-Yamuna for over six generations from their capital at Kanyakubja. They earlier served as vassals of the Guptas and later ...
king Anantavarman.
Wilkins seems to have relied essentially on the similarities with later
Brahmic scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...
, such as the script of the
Pala period and early forms of
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...
.
Early Brahmi, however, remained unreadable.
Progress resumed in 1834 with the publication of proper facsimiles of the inscriptions on the
Allahabad pillar of
Ashoka
Ashoka, also known as Asoka or Aśoka ( ; , ; – 232 BCE), and popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was List of Mauryan emperors, Emperor of Magadha from until #Death, his death in 232 BCE, and the third ruler from the Mauryan dynast ...
, notably containing
Edicts of Ashoka
The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of more than thirty inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, attributed to Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 268 BCE to 2 ...
as well as inscriptions by the
Gupta Empire
The Gupta Empire was an Indian empire during the classical period of the Indian subcontinent which existed from the mid 3rd century to mid 6th century CE. At its zenith, the dynasty ruled over an empire that spanned much of the northern Indian ...
ruler
Samudragupta
Samudragupta (Gupta script: ''Sa-mu-dra-gu-pta'', ( 335–375 CE) was the second emperor of the Gupta Empire of ancient India. A military genius and a patron of arts, he is regarded among the greatest rulers in Indian history. As a son of th ...
.
James Prinsep
James Prinsep (20 August 1799 – 22 April 1840) was an English scholar, Orientalism, orientalist and antiquary. He was the founding editor of the ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal'' and is best remembered for deciphering the Kharost ...
, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
, started to analyse the inscriptions and made deductions on the general characteristics of the early Brahmi script essentially relying on statistical methods.
This method, published in March 1834, allowed him to classify the characters found in inscriptions, and to clarify the structure of Brahmi as being composed of consonantal characters with vocalic "inflections". He was able to correctly guess four out of five vocalic inflections, but the value of consonants remained unknown.
Although this statistical method was modern and innovative, the actual decipherment of the script would have to wait until after the discovery of bilingual inscriptions, a few years later.
The same year, in 1834, some attempts by Rev. J. Stevenson were made to identify intermediate early Brahmi characters from the
Karla Caves
The Karla Caves, Karli Caves, Karle Caves or Karla Cells, are a complex of ancient Buddhist Indian rock-cut architecture, Indian rock-cut caves at Karli, India, Karli near Lonavala, Maharashtra. It is just 10.9 Kilometers away from Lonavala. Ot ...
() based on their similarities with the
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 ...
of the
Samudragupta
Samudragupta (Gupta script: ''Sa-mu-dra-gu-pta'', ( 335–375 CE) was the second emperor of the Gupta Empire of ancient India. A military genius and a patron of arts, he is regarded among the greatest rulers in Indian history. As a son of th ...
inscription of the
Allahabad pillar (4th century CE), which had just been published, but this led to a mix of good (about 1/3) and bad guesses and did not permit proper decipherment of the Brahmi.
The next major step towards deciphering the ancient Brahmi script of the 3rd–2nd centuries BCE was made in 1836 by Norwegian scholar
Christian Lassen, who used a bilingual Greek-Brahmi coin of
Indo-Greek
The Indo-Greek Kingdom, also known as the Yavana Kingdom, was a Hellenistic period, Hellenistic-era Ancient Greece, Greek kingdom covering various parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwestern India.
The term "Indo-Greek Kingdom" ...
king
Agathocles
Agathocles ( Greek: ) is a Greek name. The most famous person called Agathocles was Agathocles of Syracuse, the tyrant of Syracuse. The name is derived from and .
Other people named Agathocles include:
*Agathocles, a sophist, teacher of Damon
...
and similarities with the
Pali
Pāli (, IAST: pāl̤i) is a Classical languages of India, classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages, Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pali Canon, Pāli Can ...
script to correctly and securely identify several Brahmi letters.
The matching legends on the bilingual coins of Agathocles were:
James Prinsep
James Prinsep (20 August 1799 – 22 April 1840) was an English scholar, Orientalism, orientalist and antiquary. He was the founding editor of the ''Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal'' and is best remembered for deciphering the Kharost ...
was then able to complete the decipherment of the Brahmi script.
[More details about Buddhist monuments at Sanchi](_blank)
, Archaeological Survey of India, 1989. After acknowledging Lassen's first decipherment, Prinsep used a bilingual coin of Indo-Greek king
Pantaleon to decipher a few more letters.
James Prinsep then analysed a large number of donatory inscriptions on the reliefs in
Sanchi
Sanchi Stupa is a Buddhist art, Buddhist complex, famous for its Great Stupa, on a hilltop at Sanchi Town in Raisen District of the States and territories of India, State of Madhya Pradesh, India. It is located, about 23 kilometers from Raisen ...
, and noted that most of them ended with the same two Brahmi characters: "𑀤𑀦𑀁". Prinsep guessed correctly that they stood for "''
danam''", the
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
word for "gift" or "donation", which permitted to further increase the number of known letters.
With the help of Ratna Pâla, a
Singhalese Pali scholar and linguist, Prinsep then completed the full decipherment of the Brahmi script. In a series of results that he published in March 1838 Prinsep was able to translate the inscriptions on a large number of rock edicts found around India, and provide, according to
Richard Salomon, a "virtually perfect" rendering of the full Brahmi alphabet.
Southern Brahmi
Ashokan inscriptions are found all over India and a few regional variants have been observed. The
Bhattiprolu alphabet, with earliest inscriptions dating from a few decades of Ashoka's reign, is believed to have evolved from a southern variant of the Brahmi alphabet. The language used in these inscriptions, nearly all of which have been found upon Buddhist relics, is exclusively Prakrit, though
Kannada
Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...
and Telugu proper names have been identified in some inscriptions. Twenty-three letters have been identified. The letters ''ga'' and ''sa'' are similar to Mauryan Brahmi, while ''bha'' and ''da'' resemble those of modern
Kannada
Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...
and
Telugu script
Telugu script (), an abugida from the Brahmic family of scripts, is used to write the Telugu language, a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as well as several other neighbouring states. It is one ...
.
Tamil-Brahmi is a variant of the Brahmi alphabet that was in use in South India by about the 3rd century BCE, particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Inscriptions attest their use in parts of Sri Lanka in the same period. The language used in around 70 Southern Brahmi inscriptions discovered in the 20th century have been identified as a Prakrit language.
[; ]
In English, the most widely available set of reproductions of Brahmi texts found in Sri Lanka is ''Epigraphia Zeylanica''; in volume 1 (1976), many of the inscriptions are dated to the 3rd–2nd century BCE.
Unlike the edicts of Ashoka, however, the majority of the inscriptions from this early period in Sri Lanka are found above caves. The language of Sri Lanka Brahmi inscriptions has been mostly been Prakrit though some
Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions have also been found, such as the
Annaicoddai seal. The earliest widely accepted examples of writing in Brahmi are found in
Anuradhapura
Anuradhapura (, ; , ) is a major city located in the north central plain of Sri Lanka. It is the capital city of North Central Province, Sri Lanka, North Central Province and the capital of Anuradhapura District. The city lies north of the cur ...
,
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
.
Red Sea and Southeast Asia
The Khuan Luk Pat inscription discovered in
Thailand
Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
is in Tamil Brahmi script. Its date is uncertain; the first century CE has been proposed.
According to Frederick Asher, Tamil Brahmi inscriptions on potsherds have been found in Quseir al-Qadim and in Berenike,
Egypt
Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
, which suggest that merchant and trade activity was flourishing in ancient times between India and the Red Sea region.
Additional Tamil Brahmi inscription has been found in Khor Rori region of
Oman
Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia and the Middle East. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman’s coastline ...
on an archaeological site storage jar.
Characteristics
Brahmi is usually written from left to right, as in the case of its descendants. However, an early coin found in
Eran is inscribed with Brahmi running from right to left, as in Aramaic. Several other instances of variation in the writing direction are known, though directional instability is fairly common in ancient writing systems.
Consonants
Brahmi is an
abugida
An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...
, meaning that each letter represents a consonant, while vowels are written with obligatory
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 ''diacrit ...
s called ''mātrā''s in Sanskrit, except when the vowels begin a word. When no vowel is written, the vowel is understood. This "default short a" is a characteristic shared with Kharosthī, though the treatment of vowels differs in other respects.
Conjunct consonants
Special
conjunct consonants are used to write
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s such as or . In modern Devanagari the components of a conjunct are written left to right when possible (when the first consonant has a vertical stem that can be removed at the right), whereas in Brahmi characters are joined vertically downwards.
File:Brahmi Kya (Ka-Ya) conjunct consonant.jpg, Kya (vertical assembly of consonants "Ka"
and "Ya"
), as in " Sa-kya- mu-nī " ( 𑀲𑀓𑁆𑀬𑀫𑀼𑀦𑀻, "Sage of the Shakyas
Shakya ( Pāḷi: ; Sanskrit: ) was an ancient Indo-Aryan clan of the northeastern region of South Asia, whose existence is attested during the Iron Age. The Shakyas were organised into a (an aristocratic oligarchic republic), also known as ...
")
File:Brahmi Sva (Sa+Va).jpg, Sva (Sa+Va)
File:Brahmi Sya (Sa+Ya).jpg, Sya (Sa+Ya)
File:Brahmi Hmii (Ha+Ma+i+i).jpg, Hmī (Ha+Ma+i+i), as in the word "Brāhmī" (𑀩𑁆𑀭𑀸𑀳𑁆𑀫𑀻).
Vowels

Vowels following a consonant are inherent or written by diacritics, but initial vowels have dedicated letters. There are three "primary" vowels in Ashokan Brahmi, which each occur in length-contrasted forms: /a/, /i/, /u/;
long vowels
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels.
On one hand, many languages do not d ...
are derived from the letters for short vowels. There are also four "secondary" vowels that do not have the long-short contrast, /e:/, /ai/, /o:/, /au/. Note though that the grapheme for /ai/ is derivative from /e/ in a way that parallels the short-long contrast of the primary vowels (historically they were /ai/ and /a:i/). However, there are only nine distinct vowel diacritics, as short is understood if no vowel is written. The initial vowel symbol for /au/ is also apparently lacking in the earliest attested phases, even though it has a diacritic. Ancient sources suggest that there were either 11 or 12 vowels enumerated at the beginning of the character list around the Ashokan era, probably adding either ''aṃ'' or ''aḥ''. Later versions of Brahmi add vowels for four syllabic liquids, short and long /ṛ/ and /ḷ/. Chinese sources indicate that these were later inventions by either
Nagarjuna
Nāgārjuna (Sanskrit: नागार्जुन, ''Nāgārjuna''; ) was an Indian monk and Mahayana, Mahāyāna Buddhist Philosophy, philosopher of the Madhyamaka (Centrism, Middle Way) school. He is widely considered one of the most importa ...
or Śarvavarman, a minister of King
Hāla.
It has been noted that the basic system of vowel marking common to Brahmi and Kharosthī, in which every consonant is understood to be followed by a vowel, was well suited to Prakrit,
but as Brahmi was adapted to other languages, a special notation called the ''
virāma'' was introduced to indicate the omission of the final vowel. Kharoṣṭhī also differs in that the initial vowel representation has a single generic vowel symbol that is differentiated by diacritics, and long vowels are not distinguished.
The
collation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fi ...
order of Brahmi is believed to have been the same as most of its descendant scripts, one based on
Shiksha
''Shiksha'' (, ) is a Sanskrit word, which means "instruction, lesson, learning, study of skill".Sir Monier Monier-Williams A DkSanskrit-English Dictionary: Etymologically and Philologically Arranged with Special Reference to Cognate Indo-Europ ...
, the traditional Vedic theory of Sanskrit phonology. This begins the list of characters with the initial vowels (starting with ''a''), then lists a subset of the consonants in five phonetically related groups of five called ''vargas'', and ends with four liquids, three sibilants, and a spirant.
Thomas Trautmann attributes much of the popularity of the Brahmic script family to this "splendidly reasoned" system of arrangement.
Punctuation

Punctuation can be perceived as more of an exception than as a general rule in Asokan Brahmi. For instance, distinct spaces in between the words appear frequently in the pillar edicts but not so much in others. ("Pillar edicts" refers to the texts that are inscribed on the stone pillars oftentimes with the intention of making them public.) The idea of writing each word separately was not consistently used.
In the early Brahmi period, the existence of punctuation marks is not very well shown. Each letter has been written independently with some occasional space between words and longer sections.
In the middle period, the system seems to be developing. The use of a dash and a curved horizontal line is found. A lotus (flower) mark seems to mark the end, and a circular mark appears to indicate the full stop. There seem to be varieties of full stop.
In the late period, the system of interpunctuation marks gets more complicated. For instance, there are four different forms of vertically slanted double dashes that resemble " //" to mark the completion of the composition. Despite all the decorative signs that were available during the late period, the signs remained fairly simple in the inscriptions. One of the possible reasons may be that engraving is restricted while writing is not.
Baums identifies seven different punctuation marks needed for computer representation of Brahmi:
* single (𑁇) and double (𑁈) vertical bar (
danda
In Indic scripts, the daṇḍa (Sanskrit: दण्ड ' "stick") is a punctuation mark. The glyph consists of a single vertical stroke.
Use
The daṇḍa marks the end of a sentence or line, comparable to a full stop (period) as commonly us ...
) – delimiting clauses and verses
* dot (𑁉), double dot (𑁊), and horizontal line (𑁋) – delimiting shorter textual units
* crescent (𑁌) and lotus (𑁍) – delimiting larger textual units
Evolution of the Brahmi script
Brahmi is generally classified in three main types, which represent three main historical stages of its evolution over nearly a millennium:
* Early Brahmi represented in the Ashokan script. (3rd–1st century BCE)
* Middle Brahmi also known as "
Kushana Brahmi" (1st–3rd centuries CE)
* Late Brahmi represented in the
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 ...
(4th–6th centuries CE)
Early Brahmi or "Ashokan Brahmi" (3rd–1st century BCE)
Early "Ashokan" Brahmi (3rd–1st century BCE) is regular and geometric, and organized in a very rational fashion:
Independent vowels
Consonants
The final letter does not fit into the table above; it is .
Some famous inscriptions in the Early Brahmi script
The Brahmi script was the medium for some of the most famous inscriptions of ancient India, starting with the
Edicts of Ashoka
The Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of more than thirty inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, attributed to Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya Empire who ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from 268 BCE to 2 ...
, .
Birthplace of the historical Buddha
In a particularly famous Edict, the Rummindei Edict in
Lumbini,
Nepal
Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...
, Ashoka describes his visit in the 21st year of his reign, and designates Lumbini as the birthplace of the Buddha. He also, for the first time in historical records, uses the epithet "Sakyamuni" (Sage of the
Shakyas
Shakya ( Pāḷi: ; Sanskrit: ) was an ancient Indo-Aryan clan of the northeastern region of South Asia, whose existence is attested during the Iron Age. The Shakyas were organised into a (an aristocratic oligarchic republic), also known as ...
), to describe the Buddha.
Heliodorus Pillar inscription
The
Heliodorus pillar
The Heliodorus pillar is a stone column that was erected around 113 BCE in central India in Besnagar (Vidisha), Madhya Pradesh. The pillar is commonly named after Heliodorus (identified by him as a Garuda-standard), who was an ambassador of the In ...
is a stone column that was erected around 113 BCE in central India in
Vidisha
Vidisha (विदिशा, formerly known as Bhelsa and known as Besnagar and Bhaddilpur in ancient times) is a city in Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and the administrative headquarters of Vidisha district. It is located 62.5 km north ...
near modern
Besnagar
Vidisha (विदिशा, formerly known as Bhelsa and known as Besnagar and Bhaddilpur in ancient times) is a city in Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and the administrative headquarters of Vidisha district. It is located 62.5 km northe ...
, by
Heliodorus, an ambassador of the
Indo-Greek
The Indo-Greek Kingdom, also known as the Yavana Kingdom, was a Hellenistic period, Hellenistic-era Ancient Greece, Greek kingdom covering various parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwestern India.
The term "Indo-Greek Kingdom" ...
king
Antialcidas
Antialcidas Nikephoros (; epithet means "the Bearer of Victory" or "the Victorious", Brahmi: 𑀅𑀁𑀢𑀮𑀺𑀓𑀺𑀢𑀲 ''Aṃtalikitasa'', in the Heliodorus Pillar) was a king of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, who reigned from his capital at ...
in
Taxila
Taxila or Takshashila () is a city in the Pothohar region of Punjab, Pakistan. Located in the Taxila Tehsil of Rawalpindi District, it lies approximately northwest of the Islamabad–Rawalpindi metropolitan area and is just south of the ...
to the court of the
Shunga
is a type of Japanese erotic art typically executed as a kind of ukiyo-e, often in Woodcut, woodblock print format. While rare, there are also extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate ukiyo-e. Translated literally, the Japanese word '' ...
king
Bhagabhadra
Bhagabhadra ( Brāhmī: 𑀪𑀸𑀕𑀪𑀤𑁆𑀭 , ) was a Shunga Emperor who reigned in northern and central India from around 114 BCE to 83 BCE. Although the capital of the Shungas was at Pataliputra, he was also known to have held court a ...
. Historically, it is one of the earliest known inscriptions related to the
Vaishnavism
Vaishnavism () ), also called Vishnuism, is one of the major Hindu denominations, Hindu traditions, that considers Vishnu as the sole Para Brahman, supreme being leading all other Hindu deities, that is, ''Mahavishnu''. It is one of the majo ...
in India.
Osmund Bopearachchi
Osmund Bopearachchi (born 1949) is a Sri Lankan historian and numismatist who has specialized notably standardized the coinage of the Indo-Greek and Greco-Bactrian kingdoms. He is currently Emeritus Director of the CNRS at the École normale supé ...
, 2016
Emergence of Viṣṇu and Śiva Images in India: Numismatic and Sculptural Evidence
Middle Brahmi or "Kushana Brahmi" (1st–3rd centuries CE)
Middle Brahmi or "
Kushana Brahmi" was in use from the 1st–3rd centuries CE. It is more rounded than its predecessor, and introduces some significant variations in shapes. Several characters (r̩ and l̩), classified as vowels, were added during the "Middle Brahmi" period between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, in order to accommodate the transcription of
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
:
Independent vowels
Consonants
Examples
File:Coinage of Chastana with obverse Brahmi legend.jpg, Early/Middle Brahmi legend on the coinage of Chastana: RAJNO MAHAKSHATRAPASA GHSAMOTIKAPUTRASA CHASHTANASA "Of the Rajah, the Great Satrap, son of Ghsamotika, Chashtana". 1st–2nd century CE.
File:Shastana inscription.jpg, Inscribed Kushan statue of Western Satraps
The Western Satraps, or Western Kshatrapas (Brahmi: , ''Mahakṣatrapa'', "Great Satraps") were Indo-Scythian (Saka) rulers of the western and central parts of India (extending from Saurashtra in the south and Malwa in the east, covering moder ...
King Chastana, with inscription "Shastana" in Middle Brahmi script of the Kushan period (

''Ṣa-sta-na'').["The three letters give us a complete name, which I read as Ṣastana (vide facsimile and cast). Dr. Vogel read it as Mastana but that is incorrect for Ma was always written with a circular or triangular knob below with two slanting lines joining the knob" in ]
Here, ''sta''
is the conjunct consonant of ''sa''
and ''ta''
, vertically combined. Circa 100 CE.
File:Mahakhatapa.jpg, The rulers of the Western Satraps
The Western Satraps, or Western Kshatrapas (Brahmi: , ''Mahakṣatrapa'', "Great Satraps") were Indo-Scythian (Saka) rulers of the western and central parts of India (extending from Saurashtra in the south and Malwa in the east, covering moder ...
were called ''Mahākhatapa'' ("Great Satrap") in their Brahmi script inscriptions, as here in a dedicatory inscription by Prime Minister Ayama in the name of his ruler Nahapana
Nahapana (Ancient Greek: ; Kharosthi: , ; Brahmi script, Brahmi: , ;), was a member of Western Satraps, Kshaharata dynasty in northwestern India, who ruled during the 1st or 2nd century CE. According to one of his coins, he was the son of B ...
, Manmodi Caves, .
File:Nasik Cave inscription No 10.jpg, Nasik Cave inscription No.10. of Nahapana
Nahapana (Ancient Greek: ; Kharosthi: , ; Brahmi script, Brahmi: , ;), was a member of Western Satraps, Kshaharata dynasty in northwestern India, who ruled during the 1st or 2nd century CE. According to one of his coins, he was the son of B ...
, Cave No.10.
Late Brahmi or "Gupta Brahmi" (4th–6th centuries CE)
Independent vowels
Consonants
Examples
File:Kanheri-brahmi.jpg, 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 ...
on stone Kanheri Caves, one of the earliest descendants of Brahmi
File:Barabar Caves Gopika Cave Inscription of Anantavarman 5th- or 6th-century CE Sanskrit in Gupta script.jpg, The Gopika Cave Inscription
__NOTOC__
The Gopika Cave Inscription, also called the Nagarjuni Hill Cave Inscription II of Anantavarman or formerly the Gya inscription (referring to the nearby city of Bodh Gaya, Gaya), is a 5th- or 6th-century CE Sanskrit inscription in Late B ...
of Anantavarman, in the Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
language and using the Gupta script. Barabar Caves
The Barabar Hill Caves are the oldest surviving rock-cut caves in India, dating from the Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE), some with Ashokan inscriptions, located in the Makhdumpur region of Jehanabad district, Bihar, India, north of Gaya.
The ...
, Bihar
Bihar ( ) is a states and union territories of India, state in Eastern India. It is the list of states and union territories of India by population, second largest state by population, the List of states and union territories of India by are ...
, or 6th century CE.
File:Mihirakula of the Alchon Huns.jpg, Coin of Alchon Huns
The Alchon Huns, ( Bactrian: ''Alkhon(n)o'' or ''Alkhan(n)o'') also known as the Alkhan, Alchono, Alxon, Alkhon, Alakhana, and Walxon, were a nomadic people who established states in Central Asia and South Asia during the 4th and 6th centurie ...
ruler Mihirakula
Mihirakula (Gupta script: , ''Mi-hi-ra-ku-la'', Chinese: 摩酰逻矩罗 ''Mo-hi-lo-kiu-lo''), sometimes referred to as Mihiragula or Mahiragula, was the second and last Alchon Huns, Alchon Hun king of northwestern region of the Indian subcont ...
. Obv: Bust of king, with legend in 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 ...
(
)





, ''(Ja)yatu Mihirakula'' ("Let there be victory to Mihirakula").
File:Sanchi, Inscription of Candragupta II..JPG, Sanchi inscription of Chandragupta II.
Descendants

Over the course of a millennium, Brahmi developed into numerous regional scripts. Over time, these regional scripts became associated with the local languages. A Northern Brahmi gave rise to the
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 ...
during the
Gupta Empire
The Gupta Empire was an Indian empire during the classical period of the Indian subcontinent which existed from the mid 3rd century to mid 6th century CE. At its zenith, the dynasty ruled over an empire that spanned much of the northern Indian ...
, sometimes also called "Late Brahmi" (used during the 5th century), which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the Middle Ages, including the
Siddhaṃ script
(also ') is an Brahmic scripts, Indic script used in India from the 6th century to the 13th century. Also known in its later evolved form as Siddhamātṛkā, Siddham is a medieval Brahmic scripts, Brahmic abugida, derived from the Gupta sc ...
(6th century) and
Śāradā script
The Śāradā, Sarada or Sharada script is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts. The script was widespread between the 8th and 12th centuries in the northwestern parts of Indian Subcontinent (in Kashmir and neighbouring ...
(9th century).
Southern Brahmi gave rise to the
Grantha alphabet (6th century), the
Vatteluttu alphabet (8th century), and due to the
contact of Hinduism with Southeast Asia during the early centuries CE, also gave rise to the
Baybayin
Baybayin (,),
also sometimes erroneously referred to as alibata, is a Suyat, Philippine script widely used primarily in Luzon during the 16th and 17th centuries and prior to write Tagalog language, Tagalog and to a lesser extent Visayan lang ...
in the
Philippines
The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
, the
Javanese script
Javanese script (natively known as ''Aksara Jawa'', ''Hanacaraka'', ''Carakan'', and ''Dentawyanjana'') is one of Indonesia's traditional scripts developed on the island of Java. The script is primarily used to write the Javanese language ...
in
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
, the
Khmer alphabet
Khmer script (, )Huffman, Franklin. 1970. ''Cambodian System of Writing and Beginning Reader''. Yale University Press. . is an abugida (alphasyllabary) script used to write the Khmer language, the official language of Cambodia. It is also use ...
in
Cambodia
Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
, and the
Old Mon script
Old or OLD may refer to:
Places
*Old, Baranya, Hungary
*Old, Northamptonshire, England
* Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD)
*OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, M ...
in
Burma
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...
.
Also in the Brahmic family of scripts are several
Central Asia
Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...
n scripts such as
Tibetan,
Tocharian (also called slanting Brahmi), and the one used to write the
Saka language.
The Brahmi script also evolved into the
Nagari script, which in turn evolved into
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...
and
Nandinagari. Both were used to write
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, until the latter was merged into the former. The resulting script is widely adopted across India to write Sanskrit,
Marathi
Marathi may refer to:
*Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India
**Marathi people (Uttar Pradesh), the Marathi people in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh
*Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Mar ...
,
Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
and its dialects, and
Konkani __NOTOC__
Konkani may refer to:
Language
* Konkani language is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Konkan region of India.
* Konkani alphabets, different scripts used to write the language
**Konkani in the Roman script, one of the scripts used to ...
.
The arrangement of Brahmi was adopted as the modern order of Japanese
kana
are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , wh ...
, though the letters themselves are unrelated.
Possible tangential relationships
Some authors have theorized that some of the basic letters of
hangul
The Korean alphabet is the modern writing system for the Korean language. In North Korea, the alphabet is known as (), and in South Korea, it is known as (). The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs ...
may have been influenced by the
'Phags-pa script of the
Mongol Empire
The Mongol Empire was the List of largest empires, largest contiguous empire in human history, history. Originating in present-day Mongolia in East Asia, the Mongol Empire at its height stretched from the Sea of Japan to parts of Eastern Euro ...
, itself a derivative of the
Tibetan alphabet
The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system, or ''abugida'', forming a part of the Brahmic scripts, and used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. Its exact origins a ...
, a Brahmi script (see
Origin of Hangul). However, one of the authors, Gari Ledyard, on whose work much of this theorized connection rests, cautions against giving 'Phags-pa much credit in the development of Hangul:
Unicode
Early Ashokan Brahmi was added to the
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0.
The Unicode block for Brahmi is U+11000–U+1107F. It lies within the
Supplementary Multilingual Plane
In the Unicode standard, a plane is a contiguous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadecimal ...
. As of June 2022 there are two non-commercially available fonts that support Brahmi, namely Noto Sans Brahmi commissioned by
Google
Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, which covers almost all the characters, and Adinatha, which only covers Tamil Brahmi.
Segoe UI Historic, tied in with
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...
, also features Brahmi glyphs.
Script and Font Support in Windows – Windows 10
, MSDN Go Global Developer Center.
The Sanskrit word for Brahmi, ब्राह्मी (IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Brahmic family, Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that ...
''Brāhmī'') in the Brahmi script should be rendered as follows: .
See also
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
* Gérard Fussman, ''Les premiers systèmes d'écriture en Inde'', in Annuaire du Collège de France 1988–1989 (in French)
*
* Oscar von Hinüber, ''Der Beginn der Schrift und frühe Schriftlichkeit in Indien'', Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990 (in German)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
*
External links
* of the Indian Institute of Science
The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a Public university, public, Deemed university, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The ...
*
Indoskript 2.0
a paleographic database of Brahmi and Kharosthi
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brahmi Script
3rd-century BC establishments in India
Linguistic history of India
Obsolete writing systems
Brahmic scripts