Brahmic scripts descended from theBrahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign ofAshoka, who used the scriptfor imperial edicts. Northern Brahmi gave rise to theGupta script during theGupta period, which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during themedieval period. Notable examples of such medieval scripts, developed by the 7th or 8th century, includeNagari,Siddham andSharada.
Southern Brahmi evolved into theKadamba,Pallava andVatteluttu scripts, which in turn diversified into other scripts of South India and Southeast Asia. Brahmic scripts spread in a peaceful manner,Indianization, or the spread of Indian learning. The scripts spread naturally to Southeast Asia, at ports on trading routes.[2] At these trading posts, ancient inscriptions have been found in Sanskrit, using scripts that originated in India. At first, inscriptions were made in Indian languages, but later the scripts were used to write the local Southeast Asian languages. Hereafter, local varieties of the scripts were developed. By the 8th century, the scripts had diverged and separated into regional scripts.[3]
Some characteristics, which are present in most but not all the scripts, are:
Eachconsonant has aninherent vowel which is usually a short ‘ə’ (inBengali,Assamese andOdia, the phoneme is /ɔ/ due to sound shifts). Other vowels are written by adding to the character. Amark, known inSanskrit as avirama/halanta/hasanta, can be used to indicate the absence of an inherent vowel, although it is rarely used.
Each vowel has two forms, an independent form when not attached to a consonant, and a dependent form, when attached to a consonant. Depending on the script, the dependent forms can be either placed to the left of, to the right of, above, below, or on both the left and the right sides of the base consonant.
Consonants (up to 4 in Devanagari) can be combined inligatures. Special marks are added to denote the combination of 'r' with another consonant.
Nasalization andaspiration of a consonant's dependent vowel is also noted by separate signs.
Below are comparison charts of several of the major Indic scripts, organised on the principle that glyphs in the same column all derive from the same Brahmi glyph. Accordingly:
The charts are not comprehensive. Glyphs may be unrepresented if they are later inventions not derived from any Brahmi character.
The pronunciations of glyphs in the same column may not be identical. The pronunciation row is only representative; theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation is given forSanskrit where possible, or another language if necessary.
^This list tries to include characters of same origins, not same sounds. InBengali র is pronounced asrô but it is originallyva which is still used forwa sound inMithilakshar and modernAssamese ৱ (wabbô) was derived from middle Assamese র (wô). Compare with জ (ja) য (ya) and য় (ẏ) which are pronounced asjô,jô ande̯ô in Bengali andzô,zô andyô in Assamese respectively. য is related to Devanagari य (ya) and it is still pronounced as "ya" in Mithilakshar. Since their sounds shifted, the dots were added to keep the original sounds.
^abcdefghijklmnopModified forms of these letters are or were used for distinctions made in local language; these distinctions are not made for Sanskrit and Pali.
^abcdefghiModified forms of these letters are or were used for distinctions made in Thai; these distinctions are not made for Sanskrit and Pali in the Thai script.
^abcdefghijklmnThese letters are obsolete, but were used mainly for Sanskrit and Pali in the Lao script.
^abcdefghijklmnLetters used inOld Javanese. They are now obsolete, but are used for honorifics in contemporary Javanese.
^Invented new character to represent the Arabic letterخ.
Vowels are presented in their independent form on the left of each column, and in their corresponding dependent form (vowel sign) combined with the consonantk on the right. A glyph forka is an independent consonant letter itself without any vowel sign, where the vowela isinherent.
^abcLetters forr̥̄,l̥,l̥̄ and a few others are obsolete or very rarely used.
^includes supplementary vowels not in contemporary use
^abcdefTibetan, Lepcha, Limbu, New Tai Lue, Thai and Lao scripts do not have independent vowel forms. For syllables starting with a vowel sound, a "zero" consonant (ཨ, อ or ອ respectively) is used to represent the glottal stop /ʔ/.
^When used to write their own languages, Khmer can have either ana or ano as the inherent vowel, following the rules of its orthography.
^abcdLetters used in Old Sundanese. They are now obsolete.
The Brahmi script was already divided into regional variants at the time of the earliest surviving epigraphy around the 3rd century BC. Cursives of the Brahmi script began to diversify further from around the 5th century AD and continued to give rise to new scripts throughout the Middle Ages. The main division in antiquity was between northern andsouthern Brahmi. In the northern group, theGupta script was very influential, and in the southern group theVatteluttu andKadamba/Pallava scripts with thespread of Buddhism sent Brahmic scripts throughout Southeast Asia.[citation needed]
Was used inSouth Sulawesi, Indonesia for writing theMakassarese language.[11] Makasar script is also known as "Old Makassarese" or "Makassarese bird script" in English-language scholarly works.[12]
^abFrellesvig, Bjarke (2010).A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 177–178.ISBN978-0-521-65320-6.
^Court, C. (1996). Introduction. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.)The World's Writing Systems (pp. 443). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
^Court, C. (1996). The spread of Brahmi Script into Southeast Asia. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.)The World's Writing Systems (pp. 445–449). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
^Chelliah, Shobhana Lakshmi (1997).A Grammar of Meithei. De Gruyter. p. 355.ISBN3-11-014321-6.In the classification of scripts provided by K. S. Singh and Manoharan ..., Meithei Mayek is part of the Tibetan group of scripts, which originated from the Gupta Brahmi script