Sylheti Nagri ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ
Sylheti Nagari alphabet
Script type	Abugida
Period	c. 15th century to present
Direction	Left-to-right
Languages	Middle Bengali[note 1] Sylheti
Related scripts
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic Brāhmī Gupta Siddham[2][3] Nāgarī Kaithi script[4] Sylheti Nagri
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Sylo(316), ​Syloti Nagri
Unicode
Unicode alias	Syloti Nagri
Unicode range	U+A800–U+A82F
This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Sylheti Nagri orSylheti Nāgarī (Bengali: সিলেটী নাগরি,Sylheti:ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ,síloṭi nagri,pronounced[sílɔʈinagɾi]), known in classical manuscripts asSylhet Nagri (ꠍꠤꠟꠦꠐ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ) as well as bymany other names, is anIndic script.^[5][6] The script was historically used in the regions ofBengal andAssam, that were east of thePadma.^[7] It was primarily used in the eastern part of theSylhet region, to document poetry known asputhis.^[6] In the course of the twentieth century, it has lost much ground to the standardisedEastern Nagari script. Printing presses for Sylheti Nagri existed as late as into the 1970s, and in the 2000s, the script was added to theUnicode Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP).^[8] (SeeSyloti Nagri (Unicode block) for more details.)

Historically the script was transcribed inMiddle Bengali, though having similar characteristics to the more popularDobhashi literary dialect, it was distinguished for its phonological influence fromSylheti.^[1] It is also claimed that theorthography of the script equates with Sylheti, reflecting the phonetic and grammatical features of the vernacular, it provided a simpler and more precise representation than the more prevalentBengali script.^[9] Sylheti Nagri therefore represented a unique literary culture of the Sylhet region.^[10][11] Contemporarily, the script is being revived by some as a key identity marker of Sylhet's cultural heritage.^[12]

Sylhet Nagri is a compound of "Sylhet" (ꠍꠤꠟꠐ) and "nāgrī" (ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ).Sylhet is the name ofthe region in which the script was primarily used and originated from.Nagri means "of or pertaining to an abode (nagar)". Hence,Sylhet Nagri denotesfrom the abode or city of Sylhet. In recent times it has come to be known asSylheti Nagri although this name was not used in the classical manuscripts such asPohela Kitab by Muhammad Abdul Latif.^[13]Nagendranath Basu asserts thatNagri is named after theNagar Brahmins who were known for retaining theirNagri scripts while adopting the local language of places which they migrated to.^[14]

The script has been known by other names such asJalalabadi Nagri (ꠎꠣꠟꠣꠟꠣꠛꠣꠖꠤ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ) after the name of Jalalabad (Sylhet),Phul Nagri (ꠚꠥꠟ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ),Jangli Nagri andKat Nagri,^[15] among others.^[16] Another popular term isMusalmani Nagri (ꠝꠥꠍꠟ꠆ꠝꠣꠘꠤ ꠘꠣꠉꠞꠤ) due to its prevalence among Muslims of Sylhet.^[14]

According to Qadir (1999) and Professor Clifford Wright, the script descends fromKaithi script, a script predominantly used inBihar.^[4]

The specific origin of the script is debated. Though most popular in Sylhet, the script was historically also used inGreater Mymensingh,Northeast India andWest Bengal.^[17] One hypothesis is that the Muslims of Sylhet were the ones to invent it for the purpose of mass Islamic education,^[18] which is thought to have taken place during the 15th century, whenBengali Hindus led byKrishna Chaitanya, started aSanskrit andVaishnavist reawakening movement.^[19] On the other hand,Ahmad Hasan Dani believes that, it was invented by the Afghans duringtheir rule of Bengal, since Nagri letters resemble Afghan coin symbols and the large number of Afghan inhabitants in Sylhet at the time.^[6] Another theory dates the script's origin as late as the seventeenth to eighteenth century, claiming that it was invented to facilitate the Muslimsepoys coming from the joint state ofBihar and other immigrant Muslims.^[20]

Though almost solely used byMuslims, there are other theories which point the script's origins to Buddhists and Hindus who later converted toIslam. A popular theory is that it was brought to the region viaNagar Brahmins. This is aHindu caste known for travelling and settling acrossthe subcontinent, adopting the local language but writing in their ownNagari-variant of Kaithi instead.^[21] The Brahmins converted toIslam though retained the practice of the Nagri script for poetry.^[14] This is also the case in other parts ofSouth Asia such asSindh,Multan andVaranasi. Baitali Kaithi was a former script used to writeHindustani at a similar time, and it was identical to Sylhet Nagri with the exception that the latter had amatra (upper horizontal line used inBrahmic scripts).^[22] Others say that the script was invented by immigrantBhikkhus (originally Buddhist in faith) from neighbouring countries such asNepal.^[20]

Manuscripts have been found of works such asRag Namah by Fazil Nasim Muhammad,Shonabhaner Puthi by Abdul Karim and the earliest known workTalib Husan (1549) by Ghulam Husan.^[17]

The simplistic nature of the script inspired a lot of poets, though the bulk of Sylheti Nagri literature was born in the late 19th century. Abdul Karim, amunshi who was studying and completing his education inLondon, spent several years in the English capital to learn the printing trade. After returning home in circa 1869, he designed a woodblock type for the script and founded the Islamia Printing Press in Bandar Bazar,Sylhet. Padmanath Bhattacharjee Vidyabinod, who wrote the first scholarly article on the script, is of the opinion that Abdul Karim's standardisation marks the start of the script'sreawakening (nobojonmo) period.^[23] Prior to Abdul Karim's intervention, not much is known about the popularity and usage of the script.^[24] The manuscripts were of prosaic quality,^[20] but poetry was also abundant. The MunshiSadeq Ali is considered to have been the greatest and most popular writer of the script. Apart from renowned literary works such asHalat-un-Nabi,Jongonama,Mahabbatnama orNoor Noshihot, it has been used to write medicine and magical manuscripts, as well asPoems of the Second World War.

Other Sylheti Nagri presses were established in Sylhet,Sunamganj,Shillong andKolkata. Some include the Sarada Printing and Publishing in Naiyorpul, Sylhet; and Calcutta's General Printing Works in 16 Gardner Lane,Taltala as well as the Hamidi Press inSealdah.^[25] It has been asserted from scholarly writings that the script was used as far asBankura,Barisal,Chittagong andNoakhali.^{[6][page needed]} The script had also spread toTripura,Mymensingh andDhaka.^[5] The script is thought to have spread to Chittagong and Barisal via river.

The script, never having been a part of any formal education, reached the common people with seeming ease.^[6] In the Sylhet region, at one stage literary works in Sylheti Nagri became more popular in usage than the Bengali script.^[26] Although the script vastly extended acrossBengal, its use "was restricted to a certain class of Muslims", in particular Muslim women.^[7] As late as the 1930s,Nagendranath Basu noticed that theBengali Muslims ofBishnupur, Bankura were using the Bengali alphabet for all purposes, but the Nagri script forputhis.^[14] According toGeorge Grierson in hisLinguistic Survey of India, the script was hardly used in any formal documentation in comparison to the Bengali script, and was only used forputhi reading or some would sign their names in this script.^[27] Many Sylheti Nagri presses fell out of use during theBangladesh War of Independence andIndo-Pakistani War of 1971, including Islamia Press in Sylhet town which was destroyed by a fire.^[28]

Research on the script multiplied to its greatest extent in post-colonialPakistan and independentBangladesh.^[7] In the late 20th century, MunshiAshraf Hussain, a researcher of Bengali folk literature, contributed immensely to Sylheti Nagri research.^[29]

In 2009, the publication of literature in the Nagri script recommenced in Bangladesh through the efforts of Mostafa Selim, who founded a publishing company called Utsho Prokashon based inDhaka, and Anwar Rashid's New Nation Library in Puran Lane, Sylhet.^[30][31] By 2014, a collection of 25 manuscripts, known asNagri Grantha Sambhar, was published by Utsho Prokashon's Muhammad Abdul Mannan and Selim. The recent revivals sparked a great interest in the country, and achieved significant coverage in national newspapers, TV and radio channels across Bangladesh.^[30][31] The government enabled free circulation of books about Nagri to be distributed to schools and colleges in Sylhet. A documentary directed by Sarwar Tamizuddin, titledNagri Lipir Nabajatra, was aired across the country. TheBangla Academy, an institution funded by theGovernment of Bangladesh to serve as the official body regarding the Bengali language,^[32] has begun hosting Nagri bookstalls at theEkushey Book Fair.^[31] In 2014, a Nagri press conference was held at the Pathak Shamabesh Center inShahbag, a major neighbourhood located in Bangladesh's capital,Dhaka.^[33] TheSylhet City Corporation andSylhet District Council funded the establishment of a £20,000 circular mural at Surma Point known as the Nagri Chattar in 2018, which was designed by Shubhajit Chowdhury.^{[citation needed]} The official building of Sylhet District's Deputy Commissioner has also installed Nagri signboards.^[34]

Another aspect of its contemporary revival is it being viewed as a key marker of Sylheti identity, in particular within the diaspora.^[12][35] This revival is primarily driven by efforts to preserve the Sylheti language as an integral part of a cultural heritage, in contrast to the dominance of Standard Bengali.SOAS University of London in the United Kingdom is one institute that has led such initiatives like the "Sylheti Project".^[36]

TheNew Testament is one of the few books that has been translated into Sylheti with the Sylheti Nagri script by James Lloyd-Williams and others in the UK, titledPobitro Injil Shorif in 2014.^[37][38]

The Sylheti Nagri script can be divided into vowels and vowel diacritics/marks, consonants and consonant conjuncts, diacritical and punctuation marks. Vowels & consonants are used as alphabet and also as diacritical marks. The script is characterised by its simplistic glyph, with fewer letters than Bengali. The total number of letters is 32; there are 5 vowels and 28 consonants.^[20]

The widely accepted number of vowels is 5, although some texts show additional vowels. For example, the diphthongôi has sometimes been regarded as an additional vowel in its own right. The vowels do not follow the sequence of Bengali alphabet. All the vowels also have their own respective diacritics known as "xar" (ꠇꠣꠞ).

• "ꠅ"/ɔ/ sounds as the defaultinherent vowel for the entire script.
• When a vowel sound occurs syllable-initially or when it follows another vowel, it is written using a distinct letter. When a vowel sound follows a consonant (or a consonant cluster), it is written with a diacritic which, depending on the vowel, can appear above, below, before or after the consonant. These vowel marks cannot appear without a consonant and are calledxar.
• An exception to the above system is the vowel/ɔ/, which has no vowel mark but is considered inherent in every consonant letter. To denote theabsence of the inherent vowel[ɔ] following a consonant, a diacritic called theꠢꠡꠘ꠆ꠔꠧhośonto (◌꠆) may be written underneath the consonant.
• Although there is only one diphthong in the inventory of the script:◌ꠂoi/oi/, the phonetic system has, in fact, many diphthongs. Most diphthongs are represented by juxtaposing the graphemes of their constituent vowel elements, with the first taking the form of a diacritic and the second an independent vowel glyph, as inꠇꠦꠃ/xeu/.

There are 27 consonants. The names of the letters are typically just the consonant sound with the inherent vowelꠅ/ɔ/. Since the inherent vowel is assumed and not written, most letters' names look identical to the letter itself, i.e. the name of the letterꠊ isghô.

Due to historical sound changes, the so-called "aspirated consonants" cause a higher or rising tone on the following vowel, but the consonants are pronounced just like the unaspirated ones (conceptually similar toThai andGurmukhi).

There is a difference between the pronunciation ofꠞrô andꠠṛô, though in ordinary speech these are pronounced the same as/ɾɔ/.

Like many otherIndic scripts, specialligatures for consonant clusters, orconjunct consonants, are used in Sylheti Nagri.^[39] For example,ꠞ꠆ꠟrlô is a conjunct ofꠞrô andꠟlô. However, the number of conjuncts commonly used is lower than other Indic scripts,^[40] and as of 2024 many fonts, browsers and word processors do not support conjuncts for Sylheti Nagri.^[39][40]

Sylheti Nagari has four poetry marks. Besides, it uses theBrahmic markdaṇḍa as well as someLatin-based punctuation marks.

The following is a sample text in Sylheti of Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights by theUnited Nations:

Sylheti in Sylheti Nagari script

ꠗꠣꠞꠣ ১: ꠢꠇꠟ ꠝꠣꠘꠥꠡ ꠡꠣꠗꠤꠘꠜꠣꠛꠦ ꠢꠝꠣꠘ ꠁꠎ꠆ꠎꠔ ꠀꠞ ꠅꠗꠤꠇꠣꠞ ꠟꠁꠀ ꠙꠄꠖꠣ ‘ꠅꠄ। ꠔꠣꠁꠘꠔꠣꠘ ꠛꠤꠛꠦꠇ ꠀꠞ ꠀꠇꠟ ꠀꠍꠦ। ꠄꠞ ꠟꠣꠉꠤ ꠢꠇꠟꠞ ꠄꠇꠎꠘꠦ ꠀꠞꠇꠎꠘꠞ ꠟꠉꠦ ꠛꠤꠞꠣꠖꠞꠤꠞ ꠝꠘ ꠟꠁꠀ ꠀꠌꠞꠘ ꠇꠞꠣ ꠃꠌꠤꠔ।

Sylheti in phoneticRomanization

Dára ex: Hôxôl manuṣ ṣadínbábe hôman ijjôt ar ôdíkar lôia fôeda ốe. Taintan bibex ar axôl asé. Er lagi hôxlôr exzône arôxzônôr lôge biradôrir môn lôia asôrôn xôra usit.

Sylheti inIPA

/d̪áɾaex|ɦɔxɔlmanuʃʃad̪ínbábeɦɔmanid͡ʒːɔt̪aɾɔd̪íkaɾlɔijafɔe̯d̪aɔ́e̯‖t̪aɪnt̪anbibexaɾaxɔlasé‖eɾlagiɦɔxlɔɾexzɔnearɔxzɔnɔɾlɔgebirad̪ɔɾiɾmɔnlɔiaasɔɾɔnxɔɾausit̪‖/

Gloss

Clause 1: All human free-manner-in equal dignity and right taken birth-take do. Their reason and intelligence exist; therefore everyone-indeed one another's towardsbiradri attitude taken conduct do should.

Translation

Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience. Therefore, they should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

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In 1997, Sue Lloyd-Williams ofSTAR produced the first computer font for script. TheNew Surma is a proprietary font.Noto fonts provides an open source font for the script.Syloti Nagri was added to theUnicode Standard in March 2005, with the release of version 4.1, and is available onApple devices.^[41] Other fonts include Mukter Ahmed's Fonty 18.ttf, developed from manuscripts to include traditional Sylheti numbers. As aroutine project of theMetropolitan University, Sylhet, Sabbir Ahmed Shawon and Muhammad Nurul Islam (under the name CapsuleStudio) developed and launched theSyloti Nagri Keyboard, also forGoogle Play, on 9 December 2017.^[42] Different keyboards and fonts are available now:

• Syloti Nagri Notes, by theUK-based Sureware Ltd on Google Play.^[43]
• Multiling O Keyboard, with additional appSylheti Keyboard plugin by Honso, on Google Play.^[44]
• Google'sGBoard has also madeSylheti (Syloti Nagri) available as an input from April 2019.^[45]

Syloti Nagri was added to theUnicode Standard in March 2005 with the release of version 4.1.

The Unicode block for Syloti Nagri, is U+A800–U+A82F:

• List of works written in Sylheti Nagri
• Ashraf Hussain, researcher of the script
• Sadeq Ali, popular writer of the script
• History of Sylhet
• Sylhet region
• Sylheti nationalism
• Puthi

• 
  Book/Literature: A page from Shoddad-or Boyan (in Sylheti Nagri script) by Pir Azmot Ali
• 
  Exhibition: Samples of Sylheti Nagri writing at a London exhibition
• 
  Calligraphy: Sylheti Nagri Calligraphy by Ridwan Ridoy
• 
  Calligraphy: Sylheti Nagri Calligraphy by Ridwan Ridoy
• 
  Woodcraft: "Mother tongue" in Sylheti Nagri by Tim Brooks
• 
  TheTakbir (Allāhu akbar) in Sylheti Nagri script

Sylheti Nagri test ofWikipedia atWikimedia Incubator

• Omniglot
• Sylheti Translation and Research
• British Library archive
• Jadavpur University archive
• Proposal to Encode Syloti Nagri Numerals

• Brahmic scripts
• Writing systems of South Asia
• Sylheti language

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