Time period 8th century to the present Parent systems Proto-Sinaitic scriptPhoenician alphabetAramaic alphabetBrahmi scriptGupta scriptSiddhaṃ scriptKamrupi script?Eastern Nagari scriptAssamese alphabetÔxômiya lipiঅসমীয়া লিপি | ||
The Assamese script is a writing system of the Assamese language. It used to be the script of choice in the Brahmaputra valley for Sanskrit as well as other languages such as Bodo (now Devanagari), Khasi (now Roman), Mising (now Roman) etc. The current form of the script has seen continuous development from the 5th-century Umachal/Nagajari-Khanikargaon rock inscriptions written in an eastern variety of the Gupta script, adopting significant traits from the Siddhaṃ script along the way. By the 17th century three styles of Assamese script could be identified (baminiya, kaitheli and garhgaya) that converged to the standard script following typesetting required for printing. The present standard is identical to the Bengali alphabet except for three letters.
Contents
- History
- Vowels
- Consonants
- Consonant clusters
- Three distinct variations of Assamese script from the Bengali
- Assamese keyboard layout
- Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- Unicode
- References
The Buranjis were written during the Ahom dynasty in the Assamese language using the Assamese alphabet. In the 14th century Madhava Kandali used Assamese script to compose the famous Saptakanda Ramayana, which is the first translation of Ramayana in a regional language after Valmiki's Ramayana in Sanskrit. Later, Sankardev used it in the 15th and 16th centuries to compose his oeuvre in Assamese and Brajavali dialect, the literary language of the bhakti poems (borgeets) and dramas.
The Ahom king Supangmung, (1663–1670) was the first ruler who started issuing Assamese coins for his kingdom. A similar script with minor differences is used to write Maithili, Bengali, Meithei and Sylheti.
History
The Umachal rock inscription of the 5th century evidences the first use of a script in the region. The script was very similar to the one used in Samudragupta's Allahabad Pillar inscription. Rock and copper plate inscriptions from then onwards, and Xaansi bark manuscripts right up to the 18th–19th centuries show a steady development of the Assamese script. The script could be said to develop proto-Assamese shapes by the 13th century. In the 18th and 19th century, the Assamese script could be divided into three varieties: Kaitheli (also called Lakhari in Kamrup region, used by non-Brahmins), Bamuniya (used by Brahmins, for Sanskrit) and Garhgaya (used by state officials of the Ahom kingdom)—among which the Kaitheli style was the most popular, with medieval books (like the Hastir-vidyrnava) and sattras using this style. In the early part of the 19th century, Atmaram Sarmah designed the first Assamese script for printing in Srerampore, and the Bengali and Assamese lithography converged to the present standard that is used today.
Vowels
The script presently has a total of 11 vowel letters, used to represent the eight main vowel sounds of Assamese, along with a number of vowel diphthongs. All of these are used in both Assamese and Bengali, the two main languages using the script. Some of the vowel letters have different sounds depending on the word, and a number of vowel distinctions preserved in the writing system are not pronounced as such in modern spoken Assamese or Bengali. For example, the Assamese script has two symbols for the vowel sound [i] and two symbols for the vowel sound [u]. This redundancy stems from the time when this script was used to write Sanskrit, a language that had a short [i] and a long [iː], and a short [u] and a long [uː]. These letters are preserved in the Assamese script with their traditional names of hôrswô i (lit. 'short i') and dirghô i (lit. 'long i'), etc., despite the fact that they are no longer pronounced differently in ordinary speech.
Vowel signs can be used in conjunction with consonants to modify the pronunciation of the consonant (here exemplified by ক, kô). When no vowel is written, the vowel অ (ô or o) is often assumed. To specifically denote the absence of a vowel, (্) may be written underneath the consonant.
Consonants
The names of the consonant letters in Assamese are typically just the consonant's main pronunciation plus the inherent vowel ô. Since the inherent vowel is assumed and not written, most letters' names look identical to the letter itself (e.g. the name of the letter ঘ is itself ঘ ghô). Some letters that have lost their distinctive pronunciation in Modern Assamese are called by a more elaborate name. For example, since the consonant phoneme /n/ can be written ন, ণ, or ঞ (depending on the spelling of the particular word), these letters are not simply called nô; instead, they are called ন dôntiya nô ("dental n"), ণ murdhôinnya nô ("retroflex n"), and ঞ niô. Similarly, the phoneme /x/ can be written as শ talôibbya xô ("palatal x"), ষ murdhôinnya xô ("retroflex x"), or স dôntiya xô ("dental x"), the phoneme /s/ can be written using চ prôthôm sô ("first s") or ছ ditiyô sô ("second s"), and the phoneme /z/ can be written using জ bôrgiya zô ("row z" = "the z included in the five rows of stop consonants") or য ôntôsthô zô ("z situated between" = "the z that comes between the five rows of stop consonants and the row of sibilants"), depending on the standard spelling of the particular word.
Consonant clusters
According to Dr. G. C. Goswami the number of two-phoneme clusters is 143 symbolised by 174 conjunct letters. Three phoneme clusters are 21 in number, which are written by 27 conjunct clusters. A few of them are given hereafter as examples:
Three distinct variations of Assamese script from the Bengali
Though ক্ষ is used in Bengali, it has a different pronunciation. Cha or chha too has different pronunciation
Assamese keyboard layout
The keyboard locations of three characters unique to the Assamese script are depicted below:
The "Indian languages TRANSliteration" (ITRANS) the ASCII transliteration scheme for Indic scripts here, Assamese; the characterisations are given below:
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Unicode
The Bengali–Assamese script was added to the Unicode Standard in October 1991 with the release of version 1.0.
The Unicode block for Assamese and Bengali is U+0980–U+09FF: