Brahmi Script

Brahmi to Nagari script

The earliest examples of writing from historical India are the edicts of emperor Aśoka from the third c. BCE. Most of his inscriptions are in the Brāhmī writing system, but in the Indian northwest Kharoṣṭhī, Aramaic and Greek are used as well. It would appear that the earliest known form of Brāhmī presupposes the existence of Kharoṣṭhī: Brāhmī follows the same system of vowel marking as Kharoṣṭhī, but has a greater number of distinct vowel signs that allow for a much better representation of Indian speech; and Kharoṣṭhī has clear historical associations (with the Aramaic script) that Brāhmī lacks. It has been suggested that the Brāhmī script was specially invented for use in the royal inscriptions of Aśoka or documents of their kind, on the basis of an acquaintance with the Kharoṣṭhī and maybe also the Aramaic or Greek scripts. The name ‘Brāhmī’ has been applied to this script family by modern scholars and is taken from the list of scripts that the young Buddha is claimed to have mastered in the Lalitavistara; the first script on this long list is called brāhmī and said to be written from left to right, while the second is called kharoṣṭhī and said to be written from right to left. The further historical development of the Brāhmī script is characterised by very gradual changes in the forms of letters conditioned by cursivisation and modification of stroke order, and by changes in the writing utensils used. The characteristic headmarks of the modern Devanāgarī and Bengali scripts, for instance, have their origin in the mark left where a reed pen first touches the writing surface, and the trend towards round letter forms in the southern varieties of Brāhmī is attributed to the southern technique of incising letters into palm leaves, where straight lines would have tended to split the leaf.

One widely used system of palaeographical subclassification is that developed by A. H. Dani, distinguishing Old, Middle, and Late Brāhmī periods, Transitional Scripts, and the modern Indian scripts. While spreading towards southern India in the Old Brāhmī period (third to first c. BCE), the script was subject to experimental and rather shortlived systemic innovations attested in the Old Tamil and Bhattiprolu inscriptions (see below). In the Middle Brāhmī period (first to third c. CE), regional variation increases; Dani distinguishes between Mathurā, Kauśāmbī, Western Deccan and Eastern Deccan styles. Brāhmī is for the first time being used to represent Sanskrit, and for this purpose four new characters are added to the script. A special device is introduced for the marking of vowelless consonants, used both for Sanskrit, where it is called virāma and first occurs in manuscripts of the first c. CE, and for Tamil, where it is called puḷḷi and attested in inscriptions from the second c. CE (Mahadevan 2003, p. 198). In the course of trade relations and cultural exchange, the Brāhmī script is being exported to Central Asia and Southeast Asia. For several centuries, Indian forms of the script continue being used in both these regions, primarily for the writing of Sanskrit texts. It is first during the Late Brāhmī period (fourth to seventh c. CE) that distinct Central Asian and Southeast Asian forms of Brāhmī develop, which then also begin being used for the writing of local languages. While the Central Asian tradition of Brāhmī comes to an end with the Muslim invasions of the region at the end of the first millenium, the Southeast Asian forms of Brāhmī develop further into the modern Southeast Asian scripts. In the period of the Transitional Scripts (seventh to tenth c. CE), the Indian Northwest sees the emergence of the proto-Śāradā form of Brāhmī that became the precursor of Śāradā and other regional scripts such as Takri and Landa, which inspired the development of the modern Gurmukhi script. In the rest of northern India, a style called Siddhamātṛkā predominated that gave rise to the modern Devanāgarī and Bengali scripts. In the Deccan, a proto-Kannada-Telugu script began to take form, while further south the Grantha script developed for the writing of Sanskrit, and the Vaṭṭeḻuttu and Tamil scripts for the writing of Tamil.

Source: Proposal for the Encoding of Brāhmī in Plane 1 of ISO/IEC 10646

Evolution of script

Conjunct Consonants (cases 3&4)

Conjunct Consonant (case 2): consonants with vertical stroke

Conjunct Consonants (case 1): r+ and +ra

Consonants +Vowels

(Improved Tables)

Consonants, Vowels and Numerals
(Cell Order: IAST, Devanagari, Brahmi)

Tables for learning Brahmi script.