Nandināgarī is a Brahmic script derived from the

Nāgarī script The Nāgarī script is the ancestor of Devanagari, Nandinagari and other variants, and was first used to write Prakrit and Sanskrit. The term is sometimes used as a synonym for Devanagari script.Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New ...

which appeared in the 7th century AD.George Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, , page 75 This script and its variants were used in the central

Deccan The Deccan is a plateau extending over an area of and occupies the majority of the Indian peninsula. It stretches from the Satpura and Vindhya Ranges in the north to the northern fringes of Tamil Nadu in the south. It is bound by the mount ...

region and

south India South India, also known as Southern India or Peninsular India, is the southern part of the Deccan Peninsula in India encompassing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana as well as the union territories of ...

, and an abundance of Sanskrit manuscripts in Nandināgarī have been discovered but remain untransliterated.Reinhold Grünendahl (2001), South Indian Scripts in Sanskrit Manuscripts and Prints, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, , pages xxii, 201-210P. Visalakshy (2003), The Fundamentals of Manuscriptology, Dravidian Linguistics Association, , pages 55-62 Some of the discovered manuscripts of Madhvacharya of the

Dvaita Dvaita Vedanta (); (originally known as Tattvavada; IAST: ''Tattvavāda''), is a sub-school in the Vedanta ''Vedanta'' (; , ), also known as ''Uttara Mīmāṃsā'', is one of the six orthodox (Āstika and nāstika, ''āstika'') trad ...

Vedanta school of

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 ...

are in Nandināgarī script. It is a sister script to

Devanāgarī 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 ...

, which is common in other parts of India.Pandey, Anshuman. (2013)
''Preliminary Proposal to Encode Nandinagari in ISO/IEC 10646''.
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Etymology

Nāgarī comes from (), which means city. There have been Nandināgarī inscriptions from the Kakatiya period found in Mahabubabad, located 212 km from Nandi Nagar, Hyderabad. The first part of the term "Nandi" is ambiguous in its context. It may mean "sacred" or "auspicious" (cf. Nandi verses in Sanskrit drama). Nandi is the name of Lord Siva's Vrishabhavahana (bull vehicle), a revered icon, and it may be the source of the name.

History

Nandināgarī is a Brāhmī-based script that was used in southern India between the 11th and 19th centuries AD for producing manuscripts and inscriptions in Sanskrit in south

Maharashtra Maharashtra () is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. It is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian states of Karnataka and Goa to the south, Telangana to th ...

Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...

and

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (ISO 15919, ISO: , , AP) is a States and union territories of India, state on the East Coast of India, east coast of southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, seventh-largest state and th ...

. It derives from the central group of Nāgarī scripts and is related to Devanāgarī. There are also several styles of Nandināgarī, considered by scholars as variant forms of the script. Some of the earliest inscriptions in Nandināgarī have been found 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 ...

. The 8th century Narasimha Pallava's stone inscriptions in

Mamallapuram Mamallapuram (also known as Mahabalipuram), is a town in Chengalpattu district in the southeastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, best known for the UNESCO World Heritage Site of 7th- and 8th-century Hindu Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram. It ...

on Tamil Nadu's coast, the 10th-century coins from Chola king Rajaraja's period, the Paliyam copper plate inscriptions of the 9th century Ay king Varagunam are all in Nandināgarī script. A

Rigveda The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...

manuscript has been found written in Nandināgarī script, as well as manuscripts of other Vedas. Manuscripts of the first century BCE ''Vikramacarita'', also known as the "Adventures of

Vikrama Vikramaditya (Sanskrit: विक्रमादित्य IAST: ') was a legendary king as mentioned in ancient Indian literature, featuring in traditional stories including those in '' Vetala Panchavimshati'' and '' Singhasan Battisi''. Ma ...

" or the "Hindu Book of Tales", have been found in Nandinagari script. In a

Travancore The kingdom of Travancore (), also known as the kingdom of Thiruvithamkoor () or later as Travancore State, was a kingdom that lasted from until 1949. It was ruled by the Travancore Royal Family from Padmanabhapuram, and later Thiruvanan ...

temple of

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

, an ''Anantasayana Mahatmya'' palm-leaf manuscript was found, and it is in Nandināgarī script. Nandināgarī script was used to spell the

Sanskrit language 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 ...

, and many Sanskrit copper plate inscriptions of the

Vijayanagar Empire The Vijayanagara Empire, also known as the Karnata Kingdom, was a late medieval Hindu empire that ruled much of southern India. It was established in 1336 by the brothers Harihara I and Bukka Raya I of the Sangama dynasty, belonging to ...

were written in that script. Numerous Sanskrit manuscripts written in Nandināgarī have been discovered in South India, but it is one of the least documented and studied ancient scripts of India. These cover

Vedas 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 ...

, philosophy, commentaries on ancient works, mythology, science and arts. These are preserved in the manuscript libraries, particularly those in the southern regions of the country. Some Nandināgarī texts are in biscript that include other major south India language scripts, such as Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada scripts.

Comparison to Devanāgarī

Nandināgarī and Devanāgarī scripts are very close and share many similarities, but they also show systematic differences. Nandināgarī differs from Devanāgarī more in the shape of its vowels, and less in many consonant shapes. It has an overline at the top of each character but does not conjoin them across whole words as one long, connected, horizontal line (). Nandināgarī is thus a sister script of Devanāgarī, but not a trivial variation. The Nandināgarī manuscripts also show cosmetic and style differences, such as the use of distinct

Anusvara Anusvara ( ; , , ), also known as Bindu ( ; ), is a symbol used in many Indic scripts to mark a type of nasal sound, typically transliterated or in standards like ISO 15919 and IAST. Depending on its location in a word and the language for ...

s and method of labeling each hymn or verse.Srinidhi (2015)
Encoding of Vedic characters used in non-Devanagari scripts
UNICODE International, pages 7-9

Unicode

Nandināgarī script 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 March 2019 with the release of version 12.0. The Unicode block for Nandināgarī is U+119A0–U+119FF:

References

External links

Palaeographical Importance of Nandinagari
''HareKrsna.com'' {{list of writing systems Brahmic scripts Obsolete writing systems