Devanagari
Writing script for many North Indian and Nepalese languages / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Devanagari (/ˌdeɪvəˈnɑːɡəri/ DAY-və-NAH-gər-ee; देवनागरी, IAST: Devanāgarī, Sanskrit pronunciation: [deːʋɐˈnaːɡɐriː]) is an Indic script used in the northern Indian subcontinent. Also simply called Nāgari (Sanskrit: नागरि, Nāgari),[8] it is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system),[9] based on the ancient Brāhmi script.[10] It is one of the official scripts of the Republic of India and Nepal. It was developed and in regular use by the 7th century CE[8] and achieved its modern form by 1000 CE.[11] The Devanāgari script, composed of 48 primary characters, including 14 vowels and 34 consonants,[12] is the fourth most widely adopted writing system in the world,[13] being used for over 120 languages.[14]
Devanāgari देवनागरी | |
---|---|
Script type | |
Time period | 10th century CE to present[1][2] |
Direction | Left-to-right |
Region | |
Languages | Apabhramsha, Angika, Awadhi, Bajjika, Bhili, Bhojpuri, Boro, Braj, Chhattisgarhi, Dogri, Garhwali, Haryanvi, Hindi, Kashmiri, Khandeshi, Konkani, Kumaoni, Magahi, Maithili, Marathi, Marwari, Mundari, Nagpuri, Newari, Nepali, Pāli, Pahari, Prakrit, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Santali, Saraiki, Sherpa, Sindhi, Surjapuri, and many more. |
Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Sister systems | Nandināgarī Kaithi Gujarātī Moḍī |
ISO 15924 | |
ISO 15924 | Deva (315), Devanagari (Nagari) |
Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Devanagari |
U+0900–U+097F Devanagari, U+A8E0–U+A8FF Devanagari Extended, U+11B00–11B5F Devanagari Extended-A, U+1CD0–U+1CFF Vedic Extensions | |
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. |
The orthography of this script reflects the pronunciation of the language.[14] Unlike the Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of letter case.[15] It is written from left to right, has a strong preference for symmetrical rounded shapes within squared outlines, and is recognisable by a horizontal line, known as a शिरोरेखा śirorekhā, that runs along the top of full letters.[9] In a cursory look, the Devanāgarī script appears different from other Indic scripts, such as Bengali-Assamese or Gurmukhi, but a closer examination reveals they are very similar except for angles and structural emphasis.[9]
Among the languages using it as a primary or secondary script are Marathi, Pāḷi, Sanskrit,[16] Hindi,[17] Boro, Nepali, Sherpa, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha,[18] Chhattisgarhi, Haryanvi, Magahi, Nagpuri, Rajasthani, Khandeshi, Bhili, Dogri, Kashmiri, Maithili, Konkani, Sindhi, Nepal Bhasa, Mundari, Angika, Bajjika and Santali.[14] The Devanāgarī script is closely related to the Nandināgarī script commonly found in numerous ancient manuscripts of South India,[19][20] and it is distantly related to a number of southeast Asian scripts.[14]
Devanāgarī is formed by the addition of the word deva (देव) to the word nāgarī (नागरी). Nāgarī is an adjective derived from nagara (नगर), a Sanskrit word meaning "town" or "city," and literally means "urban" or "urbane."[21]. The word Nāgarī (implicitly modifying lipi, "script") was used on its own to refer to a North Indian script, or perhaps a number of such scripts, as Al-Biruni attests in the 11th century; the form Devanāgarī is attested later, at least by the 18th century.[22] The name of the Nandināgarī script is also formed by adding a prefix to the generic script name nāgarī. The precise origin and significance of the prefix deva remains unclear.
Devanāgarī is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of India, Nepal, Tibet, and Southeast Asia.[23][24] It is a descendant of the 3rd century BCE Brāhmī script, which evolved into the Nagari script which in turn gave birth to Devanāgarī and Nandināgarī. Devanāgarī has been widely adopted across India and Nepal to write Sanskrit, Marathi, Hindi, Central Indo-Aryan languages, Konkani, Boro, and various Nepalese languages.
Some of the earliest epigraphic evidence attesting to the developing Sanskrit Nāgarī script in ancient India is from the 1st to 4th century CE inscriptions discovered in Gujarat.[10] Variants of script called nāgarī, recognisably close to Devanāgarī, are first attested from the 1st century CE Rudradaman inscriptions in Sanskrit, while the modern standardised form of Devanāgarī was in use by about 1000 CE.[11][25] Medieval inscriptions suggest widespread diffusion of Nāgarī-related scripts, with biscripts presenting local script along with the adoption of Nāgarī scripts. For example, the mid 8th-century Pattadakal pillar in Karnataka has text in both Siddha Matrika script, and an early Telugu-Kannada script; while, the Kangra Jawalamukhi inscription in Himachal Pradesh is written in both Sharada and Devanāgarī scripts.[26]
The Nāgarī script was in regular use by the 7th century CE, and it was fully developed by about the end of first millennium.[8][11] The use of Sanskrit in Nāgarī script in medieval India is attested by numerous pillar and cave-temple inscriptions, including the 11th-century Udayagiri inscriptions in Madhya Pradesh,[27] and an inscribed brick found in Uttar Pradesh, dated to be from 1217 CE, which is now held at the British Museum.[28] The script's prototypes and related versions have been discovered with ancient relics outside India, in places such as Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Indonesia. In East Asia, the Siddhaṃ matrika script (considered as the closest precursor to Nāgarī) was in use by Buddhists.[16][29] Nāgarī has been the primus inter pares of the Indic scripts.[16] It has long been used traditionally by religiously educated people in South Asia to record and transmit information, existing throughout the land in parallel with a wide variety of local scripts (such as Moḍī, Kaithi, and Mahajani) used for administration, commerce, and other daily uses.
Sharada remained in parallel use in Kashmir. An early version of Devanāgarī is visible in the Kutila inscription of Bareilly dated to VS 1049 (992 CE), which demonstrates the emergence of the horizontal bar to group letters belonging to a word.[1] One of the oldest surviving Sanskrit texts from the early post-Maurya period consists of 1,413 Nāgarī pages of a commentary by Patanjali, with a composition date of about 150 BCE, the surviving copy transcribed about 14th century CE.[30]
k- | kh- | g- | gh- | ṅ- | c- | ch- | j- | jh- | ñ- | ṭ- | ṭh- | ḍ- | ḍh- | ṇ- | t- | th- | d- | dh- | n- | p- | ph- | b- | bh- | m- | y- | r- | l- | v- | ś- | ṣ- | s- | h- | |
Brahmi | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gupta | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Devanagari | क | ख | ग | घ | ङ | च | छ | ज | झ | ञ | ट | ठ | ड | ढ | ण | त | थ | द | ध | न | प | फ | ब | भ | म | य | र | ल | व | श | ष | स | ह |
East Asia
In the 7th century, under the rule of Songtsen Gampo of the Tibetan Empire, Thonmi Sambhota was sent to Nepal to open marriage negotiations with a Nepali princess and to find a writing system suitable for the Tibetan language. He then invented the Tibetan script based on the Nāgarī used in Kashmir. He added 6 new characters for sounds that did not exist in Sanskrit.[32]
Other scripts closely related to Nāgarī (such as Siddhaṃ) were introduced throughout East and Southeast Asia from the 7th to the 10th centuries CE: notably in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Japan.[33][34]
Most of the Southeast Asian scripts have roots in Dravidian scripts, but a few found in south-central regions of Java and isolated parts of southeast Asia resemble Devanāgarī or its prototypes. The Kawi script in particular is similar to the Devanāgarī in many respects, though the morphology of the script has local changes. The earliest inscriptions in the Devanāgarī-like scripts are from around the 10th century CE, with many more between the 11th and 14th centuries.[35][36]
Some of the old-Devanāgarī inscriptions are found in Hindu temples of Java, such as the Prambanan temple.[37] The Ligor and the Kalasan inscriptions of central Java, dated to the 8th century, are also in the Nāgarī script of north India. According to the epigraphist and Asian Studies scholar Lawrence Briggs, these may be related to the 9th century copper plate inscription of Devapaladeva (Bengal) which is also in early Devanāgarī script.[38] The term kawi in Kawi script is a loan word from kāvya (poetry). According to anthropologists and Asian studies scholars John Norman Miksic and Goh Geok Yian, the 8th century version of early Nāgarī or Devanāgarī script was adopted in Java, Bali, and Khmer around the 8th–9th centuries, as evidenced by the many contemporaneous inscriptions of this period.[39]
- Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī Sūtra in Siddhaṃ on palm leaf in 609 CE found in Hōryū-ji, Japan. The last line is a complete Sanskrit syllabary in Siddhaṃ script.
- A few palm leaves from the Buddhist Sanskrit text Shisyalekha composed in the 5th century by Candragomin. Shisyalekha was written in Devanāgarī script by a Nepalese scribe in 1084 CE. The manuscript is in the Cambridge University library.[40]