Brahmi script

Brahmi;
	; 'Bharat' (भारत) written in Brahmi Script. Example of Modern Calligraphy in Brahmi released by Government of Aryavart's Ministry of Cultural Affairs.
Type	Abugida
Languages	Saka, Tocharian, Middle Prakrit languages
Time period	c. 3rd century BCE to c. 5th century CE
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Aramaic script (?) Brahmi; ; ;
Child systems	Gupta, Pallava, and numerous others in the Brahmic family of scripts.
Sister systems	Kharoshthi (?)
ISO 15924	Brah, 300
Direction	Left-to-right
Unicode alias	Brahmi
Unicode range	U+11000–U+1107F
	Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

"Brahmi" redirects here. For other uses, see Brahmi (disambiguation).

This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest script used in Indian Subcontinent and Central Asia, during the final centuries BCE and the early centuries CE. Like its contemporary, Kharoṣṭhī, which was used in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and North India, Brahmi was an abugida.

The best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. Inscriptions in Tamil-Brahmi, a Southern Brahmic alphabet found on pottery in South India and Sri Lanka, may even predate the Ashoka edicts.^[1] No authorized body or intellectual has classified the so-called Brahmi letters found in Sri Lanka as Tamil Brahmi even though earliest dated ones found in Sri Lanka.^{[citation needed]}

The Gupta script of the 5th century is sometimes called "Late Brahmi". From the 6th century onward, the Brahmi script diversified into numerous local variants, grouped as the Brahmic family of scripts.

The script was deciphered in 1837 by James Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the British East India Company.^[2]

Origins [edit]

Main article: Early Indian epigraphy

A fragment of Ashoka's 6th pillar edict.

G R Hunter's comparison of Indus Script and Brahmi Script

Scholars, such as F. Raymond Allchin, take Brāhmī as a purely indigenous development, perhaps with the Bronze Age Indus script as its predecessor.^{[citation needed]} G. R. Hunter in his book "The Script of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and Its Connection with Other Scripts (1934) details out the derivation of the Brahmi alphabets from the Indus Script, the match being considerably higher than that of Aramaic. Even though there is little intervening evidence for writing during the millennium and a half between the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization c. 1900 BCE and the first appearance of Brahmi in the mid-4th century BCE, the Indus hypothesis is slowly gaining momentum because of the sheer differences between how Semitic alphabets work and how Brahmi works for an Indo-Aryan language.^[3]^[4] ^[5]

While the contemporary and perhaps somewhat older Kharosthi script is speculated to be a derivation of the Aramaic script, the genesis of the Brahmi script is less straightforward. An origin in the Imperial Aramaic script has nevertheless been proposed by some scholars since the publications by Albrecht Weber (1856) and Georg Bühler's On the origin of the Indian Brahma alphabet (1895).^[6]^[3]

Like Kharosthi, Brāhmī was used to write the early dialects of Prakrit. Surviving records of the script are mostly restricted to inscriptions on buildings and graves as well as liturgical texts. Sanskrit was not written until many centuries later, and as a result, Brāhmī is not a perfect match for Sanskrit; several Sanskrit sounds cannot be written in Brāhmī.^[6] Earliest^{[dubious – discuss]} Brahmi script writings were found in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. ^[7] Hence it is possible that Brahmi spread from South to North rather than North to South.

Aramaic hypothesis [edit]

The Semitic theory (Phoenician or Aramaic) is the more strongly supported by the available data.^[6] According to the Aramaic hypothesis, the oldest Brāhmī inscriptions shows striking parallels with contemporary Aramaic for the sounds that are congruent between the two languages, especially if the letters are flipped to reflect the change in writing direction.^{[citation needed]} (Aramaic is written from right to left, as are several early examples of Brāhmī.^[6]) For example, both Brāhmī and Aramaic g resemble Λ; both Brāhmī and Aramaic t resemble ʎ, etc.

Brāhmī does feature a number of extensions to the Aramaic alphabet, as it was required to write more sounds. For example, Aramaic did not distinguish dental stops such as d from retroflex stops such as ḍ, and in Brāhmī the dental and retroflex series are graphically very similar, as if both had been derived from a single Aramaic prototype. (See Tibetan alphabet for a similar later development.) Aramaic did not have Brāhmī’s aspirated consonants (kh, th, etc.), whereas Brāhmī did not have Aramaic's emphatic consonants (q, ṭ, ṣ), and it appears that these unneeded emphatic letters filled in for Brāhmī's aspirates: Aramaic q for Brāhmī kh, Aramaic ṭ (Θ) for Brāhmī th (ʘ), etc. And just where Aramaic did not have a corresponding emphatic stop, p, Brāhmī seems to have doubled up for the corresponding aspirate: Brāhmī p and ph are graphically very similar, as if taken from the same source in Aramaic p. The first letter of the two alphabets also match: Brāhmī a, which resembled a reversed κ, looks a lot like Aramaic alef, which resembled Hebrew א. The following table compares Brāhmī with Phoenician and Aramaic.

Possible derivation of Brāhmī from the Phoenician script
Greek	Α	Β	Γ	Δ		Ε	Υ	Ζ		Η	Θ		Ι	Κ		Λ	Μ	Ν		Ξ	Ο	Π		Ϻ	Ϙ		Ρ	Σ	Τ
Phoenician
Aramaic																								,
Brahmi						?				?											?
Bengali	অ	ব	গ	ধ	ঢ		ভ	দ	ড		থ	ঠ	য	ক	চ	ল	ম	ন	ণ	শ		প	ফ	স	খ	ছ	র	ষ	ত	ট
Devanagari	अ	ब	ग	ध	ढ		व	द	ड		थ	ठ	य	क	च	ल	म	न	ण	श		प	फ	स	ख	छ	र	ष	त	ट
Tamil	அ	ப	க	த	ட		வ	த	ட		த	ட	ய	க	ச	ல	ம	ந	ண			ப	ப		க	ச	ர		த	ட
Kannada	ಅ	ಬ	ಗ	ಧ	ಢ		ವ	ದ	ಡ		ಥ	ಠ	ಯ	ಕ	ಚ	ಲ	ಮ	ನ	ಣ	ಶ		ಪ	ಫ	ಸ	ಖ	ಛ	ರ	ಷ	ತ	ಟ
Telugu	అ	బ	గ	ధ	ఢ		వ	ద	డ		థ	ఠ	య	క	చ	ల	మ	న	ణ	శ		ప	ఫ	స	ఖ	ఛ	ర	ష	త	ట
IAST	a	ba	ga	dha	ḍha		va	da?	ḍa?		tha	ṭha	ya	ka	ca	la	ma	na	ṇa	śa*		pa	pha	sa*	kha	cha	ra	ṣa*	ta	ṭa

* Both Phoenician/Aramaic and Brahmi had three voiceless sibilants, but because the alphabetical ordering was lost, the correspondences among them are not clear.

Not accounted for are the six Brahmi consonants bh, gh, h, j, jh, ny, some of which could conceivably derive from the three Aramaic consonants with no obvious correspondence. (Brahmi ng was a later development.)

South Indian epigraphy [edit]

Main article: Tamil Brahmi

Some common variants of Brahmic letters

The earliest likely contact of the Hindu Kush region with the Aramaic script occurred in the 6th century BCE with the expansion of the Achaemenid Empire under Darius the Great to the Indus valley. It appears that no use of any script to write an Indo-Aryan languages occurred before the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE, despite the evident example of Aramaic. Megasthenes, an ambassador to the Mauryan court only a quarter century before Ashoka, noted explicitly that the Indians "have no knowledge of written letters". This might be explained by the cultural importance at the time (and indeed to some extent today) of oral literature for history and Hindu scripture.

There have been claims that fragments of Brāhmī epigraphy found in Tamil Nadu^[8] and Sri Lanka date as far back as the 5th or 6th century BCE,^[9] which have been taken as evidence for an early spread of Buddhism.^[3] However, evidence for pre-Mauryan Brahmi inscriptions remains inconclusive, restricted to pottery fragments with possible individual glyphs. The earliest complete inscriptions remain the 3rd-century-BCE Ashokan texts. Many early post-Ashokan remains show regional variation thought to have developed after a period of unity across India during the Ashokan period.

Ashoka inscriptions [edit]

Connections between Phoenician (4th column) and Brahmi (5th column). Note that 6th-to-4th-century BCE Aramaic (not shown) is in many cases intermediate in form between the two.

Brāhmī is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script for imperial edicts. It has commonly been supposed that the script was developed at around this time, both from the paucity of earlier dated examples, the alleged unreliability of those earlier dates, and from the geometric regularity of the script, which some have taken to be evidence that it had been recently invented.^[10]

Early regional variants [edit]

The earliest Ashokan inscriptions are found across India—apart from the Kharosthi-writing northwest—and are highly uniform. By the late third century BCE regional variants had developed, due to differences in writing materials and to the structures of the languages being written. For example, Tamil-Brahmi had a divergent system of vowel notation.

The earliest definite evidence of Brahmi script in South India comes from Bhattiprolu in Andhra Pradesh.^[11]^[12] The Bhattiprolu script was written on an urn containing Buddhist relics, apparently in Prakrit and old Telugu. Twenty-three letters have been identified. The letters ga and sa are similar to Mauryan Brahmi, while bha and da resemble those of modern Telugu script.

Sri Lankan inscriptions [edit]

In English, the most widely-available set of reproductions of Brāhmī-script texts found in Sri Lanka is Epigraphia Zeylanica; in volume 1 (1976), many of the inscriptions are dated from the 3rd to 2nd century BC.^[13]

Unlike the edicts of Ashoka, however, the majority of the inscriptions from this early period in Sri Lanka are found above caves, are only a few words in length and "rarely say anything more than the name of the donor (who paid for the renovation of the cave, presumably); sometimes the donor's profession and village-of-origin are added, and sometimes the reader may be unable to guess if they are looking at the name of a person, profession or village, but can see that it is a name in any case (and not a philosophical statement)."^[14] Earliest writing in Brahmi was found in Anuradhapura, Sri lanka in Prakrit language, ancestor of Sinhalese language. ^[15]

Characteristics [edit]

The Brāhmī symbol for /ka/, modified to represent different vowels

Variants of Brahmi over time

Brāhmī is usually written from left to right, as in the case of its descendants. However, a coin of the 4th century BCE has been found inscribed with Brāhmī running from right to left, as in Aramaic.

Brāhmī is an abugida, meaning that each letter represents a consonant, while vowels are written with obligatory diacritics, except when the vowels commence a word. When no vowel is written, the vowel /a/ is understood. Special conjunct consonants are used to write consonant clusters such as /pr/ or /rv/. In modern Devanagari conjunct consonant are written left to right to join them as one composite character whereas in Brāhmī characters are joined vertically downwards.

Vowels following a consonant are written by diacritics, but initial vowels have dedicated letters. There are three vowels in Brāhmī: /a/, /i/, /u/; long vowels are derived from the letters for short vowels. However, there are only five vowel diacritics, as short /a/ is understood if no vowel is written.

Punctuation^[16] [edit]

Punctuation can be perceived as more of an exception than as a general rule in Asokan Brāhmī. For instance, distinct spaces in between the words appear frequently in the pillar edicts but not so much in others. ("Pillar edicts" refers to the texts that are inscribed on the stone pillars oftentimes with the intention of making them public.) The idea of writing each word separately was not consistently used.

In early Brāhmī period, the existence of punctuation marks is not very well shown. Each letter has been written independently with some space between words and edicts occasionally.

In the middle period, the system seems to be in progress. The use of a dash and a curved horizontal line is found. A flower mark seems to mark the end, and a circular mark appears to indicate the full stop. There seem to be varieties of full stop.

In the late period, the system of interpunctuation marks gets more complicated. For instance, there are four different forms of vertically slanted double dashes that resemble "//" to mark the completion of the composition. Despite all the decorative signs that were available during the late period, the signs remained fairly simple in the inscriptions. One of the possible reasons may be that engraving is restricted while writing is not.

Four basic forms of the punctuation marks can be cited as:

dash or horizontal bar
vertical bar
dot
circle

Descendants [edit]

Main article: Brahmic family of scripts

Gupta script on stone Kanheri Caves, one of the earliest descendants of Brahmi

Over the course of a millennium, Brāhmī developed into numerous regional scripts, commonly classified into a more rounded Southern India group and a more angular Northern India group. Over time, these regional scripts became associated with the local languages. A Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, sometimes also called "Late Brahmi" (used during the 5th century), which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the Middle Ages, including Siddham (6th century), Sharada (9th century) and Nagari (10th century).

Southern Brahmi gave rise to the Pallava Grantha (6th century), Vatteluttu (8th century) scripts, and due to the contact of Hinduism with Southeast Asia during the early centuries CE also gave rise to the Mon script in Burma, the Javanese script in Indonesia and the Khmer script in Cambodia.

Also in the Brahmic family of scripts are several Central Asian scripts such as Tibetan and Khotanese.

Gary Ledyard has suggested that the basic letters of hangul were taken from the Phagspa script of the Mongol Empire, itself a derivative of the Brahmic Tibetan alphabet (see origin of hangul).^{[dubious – discuss]}^{[citation needed]}

The varga arrangement of Brāhmī was adopted as the modern order of Japanese kana, though the letters themselves are unrelated.^[17]

Unicode and digitization [edit]

Main article: Brahmi (Unicode block)

Brāhmī was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0.

Modern Brahmi Calligraphy

The Unicode block for Brāhmī is U+11000–U+1107F. It lies within Supplementary Multilingual Plane. Only one major font for Brahmi is available non commercially called Adinatha font. It only covers Tamil Brahmi as of April 2013.^[18]

Brahmi^[1] Unicode.org chart (PDF)
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
U+1100x	𑀀	𑀁	𑀂	𑀃	𑀄	𑀅	𑀆	𑀇	𑀈	𑀉	𑀊	𑀋	𑀌	𑀍	𑀎	𑀏
U+1101x	𑀐	𑀑	𑀒	𑀓	𑀔	𑀕	𑀖	𑀗	𑀘	𑀙	𑀚	𑀛	𑀜	𑀝	𑀞	𑀟
U+1102x	𑀠	𑀡	𑀢	𑀣	𑀤	𑀥	𑀦	𑀧	𑀨	𑀩	𑀪	𑀫	𑀬	𑀭	𑀮	𑀯
U+1103x	𑀰	𑀱	𑀲	𑀳	𑀴	𑀵	𑀶	𑀷	𑀸	𑀹	𑀺	𑀻	𑀼	𑀽	𑀾	𑀿
U+1104x	𑁀	𑁁	𑁂	𑁃	𑁄	𑁅	𑁆	𑁇	𑁈	𑁉	𑁊	𑁋	𑁌	𑁍
U+1105x			𑁒	𑁓	𑁔	𑁕	𑁖	𑁗	𑁘	𑁙	𑁚	𑁛	𑁜	𑁝	𑁞	𑁟
U+1106x	𑁠	𑁡	𑁢	𑁣	𑁤	𑁥	𑁦	𑁧	𑁨	𑁩	𑁪	𑁫	𑁬	𑁭	𑁮	𑁯
U+1107x
Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 6.1

References [edit]

^ Dates for Tamil-Brahmi as early as the 6th century have been claimed, but all dates before the 3rd century are uncertain or controversial; "the scientifically proved earliest date [for Southern Brahmi] is from Tissamaharama in southern Sri Lanka, where a Tamil-Brahmi script is dated to 200 BCE." Subramanian, T.S (29 August 2011). "Palani excavation triggers fresh debate". The Hindu (The Hindu). Retrieved 7 October 2011.
^ More details about Buddhist monuments at Sanchi, Archaeological Survey of India, 1989.
^ ^a ^b ^c Salomon, Richard, On The Origin Of The Early Indian Scripts: A Review Article. Journal of the American Oriental Society 115.2 (1995), 271–279
^ Subhash Kak, The evolution of early writing in India. Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 28, pp. 375-388, 1994.
^ P.G. Patel, Pramod Pandey, Dilip Rajgor, The Indic Scripts: Palaeographic and Linguistic Perspectives. D.K. Printworld, 2007.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Richard Salomon, "Brahmi and Kharoshthi", in The World's Writing Systems
^ Passage to India? Anuradhapura and the Early Use of the Brahmi ScriptR.A.E. Coninghama1, F.R. Allchina2, C.M. Batta1 and D. Lucya1a1 Department of Archaeological Sciences University of Bradford Bradford BD7 1DPa2 Ancient India and Iran Trust Brookstands House Brooklands Avenue Cambridge CB2 2BG
^ Subramanian, T.S., Skeletons, script found at ancient burial site in Tamil Nadu
^ Recent claims for earlier dates include fragments of pottery from the trading town of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, which have been dated to between the 6th and the early 4th centuries BCE (Salomon 1998); from Bhattiprolu;[1] and on pieces of pottery in Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu, which have been radio-carbon dated to the 6th century BCE (Subramanian 2004).
^ Richard Salomon, "Brahmi and Kharoshthi", in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems
^ "The Bhattiprolu Inscriptions", G. Buhler, 1894, Epigraphica Indica, Vol. 2
^ Buddhist Inscriptions of Andhradesa, Dr. B.S.L Hanumantha Rao, 1998, Ananda Buddha Vihara Trust, Secunderabad
^ Epigraphia Zeylanica: 1904–1912, Volume 1. Government of Sri Lanka, 1976. http://www.royalasiaticsociety.lk/inscriptions/?q=node/12
^ http://a-bas-le-ciel.blogspot.ca/2012/05/ashokas-edicts-dead-languages-and.html with an annotated photograph of one of the Sri Lankan cave inscriptions at the top of the article.
^ Passage to India? Anuradhapura and the Early Use of the Brahmi ScriptR.A.E. Coninghama1, F.R. Allchina2, C.M. Batta1 and D. Lucya1a1 Department of Archaeological Sciences University of Bradford Bradford BD7 1DPa2 Ancient India and Iran Trust Brookstands House Brooklands Avenue Cambridge CB2 2BG
^ Ram Sharma, Brāhmī Script: Development in North-Western India and Central Asia, 2002
^ Daniels & Bright, The World's Writing Systems, Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-507993-0
^ Adinatha font announcement

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Brahmi script

On The Origin Of The Early Indian Scripts: A Review Article by Richard Salomon, University of Washington (via archive.org)
Brahmi project of the Indian Institute of Science
Ancient Scripts – Brahmi
Buddhist Text in Brahmi Script
Windows Indic Script Support

[1] Dates for Tamil-Brahmi as early as the 6th century have been claimed, but all dates before the 3rd century are uncertain or controversial; "the scientifically proved earliest date [for Southern Brahmi] is from Tissamaharama in southern Sri Lanka, where a Tamil-Brahmi script is dated to 200 BCE." Subramanian, T.S (29 August 2011). "Palani excavation triggers fresh debate". The Hindu (The Hindu). Retrieved 7 October 2011.

[2] More details about Buddhist monuments at Sanchi, Archaeological Survey of India, 1989.

[Salomon_1998-3] Salomon, Richard, On The Origin Of The Early Indian Scripts: A Review Article. Journal of the American Oriental Society 115.2 (1995), 271–279

[4] Subhash Kak, The evolution of early writing in India. Indian Journal of History of Science, vol. 28, pp. 375-388, 1994.

[5] P.G. Patel, Pramod Pandey, Dilip Rajgor, The Indic Scripts: Palaeographic and Linguistic Perspectives. D.K. Printworld, 2007.

[Salomon_1996-6] Richard Salomon, "Brahmi and Kharoshthi", in The World's Writing Systems

[7] Passage to India? Anuradhapura and the Early Use of the Brahmi ScriptR.A.E. Coninghama1, F.R. Allchina2, C.M. Batta1 and D. Lucya1a1 Department of Archaeological Sciences University of Bradford Bradford BD7 1DPa2 Ancient India and Iran Trust Brookstands House Brooklands Avenue Cambridge CB2 2BG

[Subramanian-8] Subramanian, T.S., Skeletons, script found at ancient burial site in Tamil Nadu

[9] Recent claims for earlier dates include fragments of pottery from the trading town of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, which have been dated to between the 6th and the early 4th centuries BCE (Salomon 1998); from Bhattiprolu;[1] and on pieces of pottery in Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu, which have been radio-carbon dated to the 6th century BCE (Subramanian 2004).

[10] Richard Salomon, "Brahmi and Kharoshthi", in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems

[11] "The Bhattiprolu Inscriptions", G. Buhler, 1894, Epigraphica Indica, Vol. 2

[12] Buddhist Inscriptions of Andhradesa, Dr. B.S.L Hanumantha Rao, 1998, Ananda Buddha Vihara Trust, Secunderabad

[13] Epigraphia Zeylanica: 1904–1912, Volume 1. Government of Sri Lanka, 1976. http://www.royalasiaticsociety.lk/inscriptions/?q=node/12

[14] ttp://a-bas-le-ciel.blogspot.ca/2012/05/ashokas-edicts-dead-languages-and.html with an annotated photograph of one of the Sri Lankan cave inscriptions at the top of the article.

[15] Passage to India? Anuradhapura and the Early Use of the Brahmi ScriptR.A.E. Coninghama1, F.R. Allchina2, C.M. Batta1 and D. Lucya1a1 Department of Archaeological Sciences University of Bradford Bradford BD7 1DPa2 Ancient India and Iran Trust Brookstands House Brooklands Avenue Cambridge CB2 2BG

[16] Ram Sharma, Brāhmī Script: Development in North-Western India and Central Asia, 2002

[17] Daniels & Bright, The World's Writing Systems, Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-507993-0

[18] Adinatha font announcement

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Brahmi script

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