Devanagari
| Devanagari देवनागरी | |
|---|---|
 Devanagari script (vowels top, consonants bottom) in Chandas font[better source needed] | |
| Script type | |
Time period | Early form: 1st century CE[1] Modern form: 7th century CE to present[2][3] |
| Direction | left-to-right  |
| Region |  India 120+ languages use Devanagari Script
 Nepal |
| Languages | Apabhramsha, Awadhi, Bhili, Bhojpuri, Bodo, Braj, Chhattisgarhi, Dogri, Gujarati, Garhwali Haryanvi, Hindi, Hindustani, Kashmiri, Konkani, Kumaoni Magahi, Maithili, Marathi, Marwari, Mundari, Newari, Nepali, Pāḷi, Pahari, Prakrit, Rajasthani, Sadri, Sanskrit, Santali, Saraiki, Sherpa and Sindhi, Surjapuri, and many more |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
Sister systems | Nandinagari Kaithi Gujarati Moḍī |
| ISO 15924 | |
| ISO 15924 | Deva, 315 , Devanagari (Nagari) |
| Unicode | |
Unicode alias | Devanagari |
Unicode range | U+0900–U+097F Devanagari, U+A8E0–U+A8FF Devanagari Extended, U+1CD0–U+1CFF Vedic Extensions |
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is debated. | |
| Devanāgarī |
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| Brahmic scripts |
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| The Brahmic script and its descendants |
Devanagari (/ˌdeɪvəˈnɑːɡəri/ DAY-və-NAH-gər-ee; देवनागरी, IAST: Devanāgarī, Sanskrit pronunciation: [deːʋɐˈnaːɡɐriː]), also called Nagari (Nāgarī, नागरी),[9] is a left-to-right abugida,[10] based on the ancient Brāhmī script,[1] used in the Indian subcontinent. It was developed in ancient India from the 1st to the 4th century CE[1] and was in regular use by the 7th century CE.[9][11] The Devanagari script, composed of 47 primary characters including 14 vowels and 33 consonants, is the fourth most widely adopted writing system in the world,[12] being used for over 120 languages.[13]
The orthography of this script reflects the pronunciation of the language.[13] Unlike the Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of letter case.[14] It is written from left to right, has a strong preference for symmetrical rounded shapes within squared outlines, and is recognisable by a horizontal line, known as a shirorekhā, that runs along the top of full letters.[10] In a cursory look, the Devanagari script appears different from other Indic scripts such as Bengali-Assamese, Odia or Gurmukhi, but a closer examination reveals they are very similar except for angles and structural emphasis.[10]
Among the languages using it – as either their only script or one of their scripts – are Marathi, Pāḷi, Sanskrit (the ancient Nagari script for Sanskrit had two additional consonantal characters),[15] Hindi,[16] Boro, Nepali, Sherpa, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha,[17] Chhattisgarhi, Haryanvi, Magahi, Nagpuri, Rajasthani, Bhili, Dogri, Maithili, Kashmiri, Konkani, Sindhi, Nepal Bhasa, Mundari and Santali.[13] The Devanagari script is closely related to the Nandinagari script commonly found in numerous ancient manuscripts of South India,[18][19] and it is distantly related to a number of southeast Asian scripts.[13]
Etymology[]
Devanagari is a compound of "deva" देव and "nāgarī" नागरी.[9] Deva means "heavenly or divine" and is also one of the terms for a deity in Hinduism.[20] Nagari comes from नगरम् (nagaram), which means abode or city. Hence, Devanagari denotes from the abode of divinity or deities.
Nāgarī is the Sanskrit feminine of Nāgara "relating or belonging to a town or city, urban". It is a phrasing with lipi ("script") as nāgarī lipi "script relating to a city", or "spoken in city".[21]
Devanagari Script known as 'Script of the divine city' came from devanagara or the 'city of the god'. And hence interpret it as "[script] of the city of the gods".[22]
The use of the name devanāgarī emerged from the older term nāgarī.[23] According to Fischer, Nagari emerged in the northwest Indian subcontinent around 633 CE, was fully developed by the 11th-century, and was one of the major scripts used for the Sanskrit literature.[23]
History[]
Devanagari is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of India, Nepal, Tibet, and Southeast Asia.[24][23] It is a descendant of the 3rd century BCE Brahmi script, which evolved into the Nagari script which in turn gave birth to Devanagari and Nandinagari. Devanagari has been widely adopted across India and Nepal to write Sanskrit, Marathi, Hindi, Hindi dialects, Konkani, Boro and Nepali.
Some of the earliest epigraphical evidence attesting to the developing Sanskrit Nagari script in ancient India is from the 1st to 4th century CE inscriptions discovered in Gujarat.[1] Variants of script called Nāgarī, recognisably close to Devanagari, are first attested from the 1st century CE Rudradaman inscriptions in Sanskrit, while the modern standardised form of Devanagari was in use by about 1000 CE.[11][25] Medieval inscriptions suggest widespread diffusion of the Nagari-related scripts, with biscripts presenting local script along with the adoption of Nagari scripts. For example, the mid 8th-century Pattadakal pillar in Karnataka has text in both Siddha Matrika script, and an early Telugu-Kannada script; while, the Kangra Jawalamukhi inscription in Himachal Pradesh is written in both Sharada and Devanagari scripts.[26]
The Nagari script was in regular use by the 7th century CE, and it was fully developed by about the end of first millennium.[9][11] The use of Sanskrit in Nagari script in medieval India is attested by numerous pillar and cave temple inscriptions, including the 11th-century Udayagiri inscriptions in Madhya Pradesh,[27] and an inscribed brick found in Uttar Pradesh, dated to be from 1217 CE, which is now held at the British Museum.[28] The script's proto- and related versions have been discovered in ancient relics outside of India, such as in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Indonesia; while in East Asia, Siddha Matrika script considered as the closest precursor to Nagari was in use by Buddhists.[15][29] Nagari has been the primus inter pares of the Indic scripts.[15] It has long been used traditionally by religiously educated people in South Asia to record and transmit information, existing throughout the land in parallel with a wide variety of local scripts (such as Modi, Kaithi, and Mahajani) used for administration, commerce, and other daily uses.
Sharada remained in parallel use in Kashmir. An early version of Devanagari is visible in the Kutila inscription of Bareilly dated to Vikram Samvat 1049 (i.e. 992 CE), which demonstrates the emergence of the horizontal bar to group letters belonging to a word.[2] One of the oldest surviving Sanskrit texts from the early post-Maurya period consists of 1,413 Nagari pages of a commentary by Patanjali, with a composition date of about 150 BCE, the surviving copy transcribed about 14th century CE.[30]
| k- | kh- | g- | gh- | ṅ- | c- | ch- | j- | jh- | ñ- | ṭ- | ṭh- | ḍ- | ḍh- | ṇ- | t- | th- | d- | dh- | n- | p- | ph- | b- | bh- | m- | y- | r- | l- | v- | ś- | ṣ- | s- | h- | |
| Brahmi |
|