Brahmic scripts

Updated on Oct 05, 2024

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The Brahmic scripts are a family of abugida or alphabet writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia, and were once used in Japan, and are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India. They are used by languages of several language families: Indo-European, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Turkic, Tai. They were also the source of the dictionary order of Japanese kana.

History

Brahmic scripts descended from the Brahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 3rd century BC during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script for imperial edicts, but there are some claims of earlier epigraphy found on pottery in South India and Sri Lanka. The most reliable of these were short Brahmi inscriptions dated to the 4th century BC and published by Coningham et al., but scattered press reports have claimed both dates as early as the 6th century BC and that the characters are identifiably Tamil Brahmi, though these latter claims do not appear to have been published academically. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the Middle Ages, including Siddham, Sharada and Nagari.

The Siddhaṃ script was especially important in Buddhism, as many sutras were written in it. The art of Siddham calligraphy survives today in Japan. The syllabic nature and dictionary order of the modern kana system of Japanese writing is believed to be descended from the Indic scripts, most likely through the spread of Buddhism.

Southern Brahmi evolved into Old-Kannada, Pallava and Vatteluttu scripts, which in turn diversified into other scripts of South India and Southeast Asia.

Bhattiprolu was a great centre of Buddhism during 3rd century BCE and from where Buddhism spread to east Asia. The present Telugu script is derived from Bhattiprolu Script or 'Kannada-Telugu script' or Kadamba script, also known as 'old Telugu script', owing to its similarity to the same.

Initially, minor changes were made which is now called Tamil Brahmi which has far fewer letters than some of the other Indic scripts as it has no separate aspirated or voiced consonants.

Characteristics

Some characteristics, which are present in most but not all the scripts, are:

Each consonant has an inherent vowel which is usually short 'a' (in Bengali, and Assamese, it is short 'ô' due to sound shifts). Other vowels are written by adding to the character. A mark, known in Sanskrit as a virama/halant can be used to indicate the absence of an inherent vowel.

Each vowel has two forms, an independent form when not part of 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 in ligatures. Special marks are added to denote the combination of 'r' with another consonant.

Nasalization and aspiration of a consonant's dependent vowel is also noted by separate signs.

The alphabetical order is: vowels, velar consonants, palatal consonants, retroflex consonants, dental consonants, bilabial consonants, approximants, sibilants, and other consonants. Each consonant grouping had four stops (with all four possible values of voicing and aspiration), and a nasal consonant.

Comparison

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 don't derive from any Brahmi character, but are later inventions.

The pronunciations of glyphs in the same column may not be identical. The pronunciation row is only representative; the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciation is given for Sanskrit where possible, or another language if necessary.

The transliteration is indicated in ISO 15919.

Consonants

Javanese. Letters used in Old Javanese. They are now obsolete, but are used for honorifics in contemporary Javanese.

Thai. A modified form of the letter is used for, but is not restricted to, Sanskrit and Pali in the Thai script.

Malayalam. Malayalam nna implemented in Unicode 6.0. May not be rendered correctly.

Tamil. Pallava grantha letters (not used in actual Tamil) but for transcribing foreign words.

Vowels

Vowels are presented in their independent form on the left of each column, and in their corresponding dependent form (vowel sign) combined with the consonant k on the right. A glyph for ka is an independent consonant letter itself without any vowel sign, where the vowel a is inherent. When used to write their own languages, Khmer can have either an a or an o as the inherent vowel, following the rules of its orthography. Thai and Lao script do not have independent vowel forms, for syllables starting with a vowel sound, a "zero" consonant, อ and ອ, respectively, to represent the glottal stop /ʔ/.

Note: Glyphs for r̥̄, l̥, l̥̄ and a few other glyphs are obsolete or very rarely used.

List of Brahmic scripts

Scripts derived from Brahmi.

Historical

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 and southern Brahmi. In the northern group, the Gupta script was very influential, and in the southern group the Vatteluttu and Old-Kannada/Pallava scripts with the spread of Buddhism sent Brahmic scripts throughout Southeast Asia.

Northern Brahmic

Gupta script, 5th century

Sharada, 8th century

Landa, 10th century

Gurmukhi, 14th century

Khojki, 16th century

Khudawadi, 1550s

Mahajani

Multani

Takri

Siddham, 7th century

Assamese script, 13th century

Bengali alphabet, 11th century

Tibetan script, 7th century

'Phags-pa, 13th century

Tirhuta

Kalinga Alphabet

Odia, 10th century

Nagari, 8th century

Devanagari, 13th century

Gujarati, 16th century

Modi, 17th century

Kaithi, 16th century

Sylheti Nagari, 16th century

Bhaiksuki

Nepal

Bhujimol, 6th century

Ranjana, 12th century

Soyombo, 17th century

Prachalit

Anga Lipi, 720

Mithilakshar, 15th century

Southern Brahmic

(Tamil Brahmi, perhaps 5th or older but certainly 3rd, century BC, Kalinga, Bhattiprolu)

Proto Kannada

Kadamba or Old Kannada, 5th century

Pallava, 6th century

Kawi script, 8th century

Javanese script

Mon script

Burmese script

Ahom, 13th century

Tai Tham (Lanna), 14th century

Batak, 14th century

Chakma, 8th century

Vatteluttu

Tamil script

Grantha, 6th century

Dhives Akuru

Malayalam script

Tulu script

Tocharian script ("Slanting Brahmi"), 7th century

Meeitei Mayek

Unicode

As of Unicode version 9.0, the following Brahmic scripts have been encoded:

References

Brahmic scripts Wikipedia

(Text) CC BY-SA

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