Brāhmī script

Brāhmī
Type	abugida
Languages	Early Prakrit languages
Time period	perhaps 6th, and certainly 3rd, century BCE, to c. 3rd century CE
Parent systems	Disputed Brāhmī
Child systems	Gupta, Pallava, and numerous others in the Brahmic family of scripts.
Sister systems	Disputed. Most probably of imperial Aramaic origin. As per Indus Hypothesis:- 1. Indian As per Aramaic hypothesis: 1. Kharosthi 2. Greek alphabet
ISO 15924	Brah, 300
Direction	Left-to-right
Unicode alias	Brahmi
Unicode range	U+11000–U+1106F
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing. Recent discoveries have revealed earlier epigraphy in Tamil-Brahmi, a Southern Brahmic alphabet found on pottery in South India and Sri Lanka dating from before the 6th century BCE Sangam period. Southern Brahmi gave rise to Tamil Brahmi, Vatteluttu and Pallava Grantha scripts that diversified into many South East Asian scripts like the Mon script in Burma, the Javanese script in Indonesia and the Khmer script in Cambodia. 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 script was deciphered in 1837 by James Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the British East India Company. Like its contemporary in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, Kharoṣṭhī, Brāhmī was an abugida.

Brāhmī was ancestral to most of the scripts of South Asia and Southeast Asia, several Central Asian scripts such as Tibetan and Khotanese, and possibly, in part, Korean Hangul. The varga arrangement of Brāhmī was adopted as the modern order of Japanese kana, though the letters themselves are unrelated.

Gupta script on stone Kanheri Caves

Disputed Origins

Main article: Early Indian epigraphy

A fragment of Ashoka's 6th pillar edict.

The origins of the Brahmi script are unclear. Several hypotheses have been proposed, but none are supported by enough evidence for agreement among scholars.

One consensus, based on Albrecht Weber (1856) and Georg Bühler's On the origin of the Indian Brahma alphabet (1895), sees Brāhmī deriving from the Imperial Aramaic script. As of 1996, this Aramaic hypothesis was still considered the most likely scenario.[3][4] However, it has never been conclusive, and continues to be debated, especially within India.

Some 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] The Indus hypothesis has been challenged for the lack of any intervening evidence for writing during the millennium and a half between the collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation ca. 1900 BCE and the first appearance of Brahmi in the mid-4th century BCE.[4]

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.[citation needed]

Indus Script Origin

Some 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]} The Indus hypothesis has been challenged for the lack of any intervening evidence for writing during the millennium and a half between the collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation ca. 1900 BCE and the first appearance of Brahmi in the mid-4th century BCE.

S.R. Rao's Analysis

Shikaripura Ranganatha Rao (Kannada: ಶಿಕಾರಿಪುರ ರಂಗನಾಥ ರಾವ್) (born 1922) is an Indian archeologist who led teams credited with the discovery of a number of Harappan sites including the port city of Lothal in Gujarat. He also discovered the ancient city of Dwarka. Rao (1992) In a detailed chapter in his book 'Dawn and devolution of the Indus civilization' he attempted a deciphering of the Indus Script. In this, he notes a number of striking similarities in shape and form between the late Harappan characters and the Phoenician letters, arguing than the Phoenician script evolved from the Harappan script, challenging the classical theory that the first alphabet was Proto-Sinaitic. He got a Sanskritic reading from the Indus Seals.

Aramaic hypothesis

The origin of Brāhmī remains doubtful. However, a weak consensus exists among scholars for link with Aramaic. 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 was Brāhmī originally, whereas Brāhmī later came to be written left to right.[citation needed]) 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. Aramaic did not have Brāhmī’s aspirated consonants (kh, th, etc.), whereas Brāhmī did not have Aramaic's emphatic consonants (q, ṭ, ṣ – the dot diacritic here has a different meaning from the retroflex stops of Brāhmī), 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
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
Tamil	அ	ப	க	த	ட		வ	த	ட		த	ட	ய	க	ச	ல	ம	ந	ண	ஶ்		ப	ப	ஸ	க	ச	ர	ஷ	த	ட
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 they have no correspondences among them.

The six Brahmi consonants bh, gh, h, j, jh, ny, are not accountable at all. (Brahmi ng was a later development.)

Pre-Ashokan epigraphy

Main article: Tamil Brahmi

Some common variants of Brahmic letters

The origins of the Brāhmī script dates to the 6th century BC. The contact of the Hindu Kush region with the Near East occurred with the expansion of the Achaemenid Empire under Darius the Great to the Indus valley. The script to write an Indo-Aryan languages occurred is shows up in the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BC. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BC. The Bhattiprolu script have been found in old inscriptions located in the fertile Krishna river delta and the estuary region where the river meets the Bay of Bengal. The inscriptions date to before 100 BC, putting them among the earliest evidence of Brahmi writing in South India.

Fragments of Brāhmī epigraphy have been found in as remote as Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka date as far back as the 5th or 6th century BCE, which have been taken as evidence for an early spread of Buddhism.

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.

Ashokan inscriptions

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.

Early regional variants

Earliest evidence for Brahmi comes from Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. 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. 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.

Characteristics

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.

Brāhmī is an abugida, meaning that each letter represents a consonant, while vowels are written with obligatory diacritics. 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

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.

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

Main article: Brahmic family of scripts

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. Alphabets of the Southern group spread with Hinduism and Buddhism into Southeast Asia, while the Northern group spread into Tibet. Today descendants of Brāhmī are used throughout India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and in scattered enclaves in Indonesia, southern China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.^{[citation needed]} As the script of Buddhist scripture, Brahmic alphabets are used for religious purposes throughout China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

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. Canadian Aboriginal syllabics also show systematic similarity with principles and characters of Brāhmī.

Etymology and legend of Brahmi

The name Brahmi is said to have come from Brahma, the creator of the world in Indian mythology. Another source claims a Jain Legend. According to South Indian legend the Jain thirthankara Vrushabhadeva explained the script to his daughters, Brahmi and Soundhary. Therefore as a mark of this, the writing script is called Brahmi and the numerals are called Soundhary. Many scholars have linked the name with Aramaic.

Unicode

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

The Unicode block for Brāhmī is U+11000 ... U+1107F:

Brahmi 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

See also

• Indian inscriptions
• Pre-Islamic scripts in Afghanistan

Further reading

• Kenneth R. Norman, The Development of Writing in India and its Effect upon the Pâli Canon, in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens (36), 1993
• Oscar von Hinüber, Der Beginn der Schrift und frühe Schriftlichkeit in Indien, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990 (in German)
• Gérard Fussman, Les premiers systèmes d'écriture en Inde, in Annuaire du Collège de France 1988–1989 (in French)
• Siran Deraniyagala, The prehistory of Sri Lanka; an ecological perspective (revised ed.), Archaeological Survey Department of Sri Lanka, 1992.

External links

• 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