Brahmic scripts descended from the Brahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script for imperial edicts. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the medieval period. Notable examples of such medieval scripts, developed by the 7th or 8th century, include Nagari, Siddham and Sharada.
Southern Brahmi evolved into the Kadamba, Pallava and Vatteluttu scripts, which in turn diversified into other scripts of South India and Southeast Asia. Brahmic scripts spread in a peaceful manner, Indianization, or the spread of Indian learning. The scripts spread naturally to Southeast Asia, at ports on trading routes.[2] At these trading posts, ancient inscriptions have been found in Sanskrit, using scripts that originated in India. At first, inscriptions were made in Indian languages, but later the scripts were used to write the local Southeast Asian languages. Hereafter, local varieties of the scripts were developed. By the 8th century, the scripts had diverged and separated into regional scripts.[3]
Some characteristics, which are present in most but not all the scripts, are:
Each consonant has an inherent vowel which is usually a short ‘ə’ (in Bengali, Assamese and Odia, the phoneme is /ɔ/ due to sound shifts). Other vowels are written by adding to the character. A mark, known in Sanskrit as a virama/halanta/hasanta, can be used to indicate the absence of an inherent vowel, although it is rarely used.
Each vowel has two forms, an independent form when not attached to 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.
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 are later inventions not derived from any Brahmi character.
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.
^This list tries to include characters of same origins, not same sounds. In Bengali র is pronounced as rô but it is originally va which is still used for wa sound in Mithilakshar and modern Assamese ৱ (wabbô) was derived from middle Assamese র (wô). Compare with জ (ja) য (ya) and য় (ẏ) which are pronounced as jô, jô and e̯ô in Bengali and zô, zô and yô in Assamese respectively. য is related to Devanagari य (ya) and it is still pronounced as "ya" in Mithilakshar. Since their sounds shifted, the dots were added to keep the original sounds.
^ abcdefghijklmnopModified forms of these letters are or were used for distinctions made in local language; these distinctions are not made for Sanskrit and Pali.
^ abcdefghiModified forms of these letters are or were used for distinctions made in Thai; these distinctions are not made for Sanskrit and Pali in the Thai script.
^ abcdefghijklmnThese letters are obsolete, but were used mainly for Sanskrit and Pali in the Lao script.
^ abcdefghijklmnLetters used in Old Javanese. They are now obsolete, but are used for honorifics in contemporary Javanese.
^Invented new character to represent the Arabic letter خ.
^Invented new character. Actually to represent the Arabic letter ش, which has similar pronunciation with śa.
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.
^ abcLetters for r̥̄, l̥, l̥̄ and a few others are obsolete or very rarely used.
^includes supplementary vowels not in contemporary use
^ abcdefTibetan, Lepcha, Limbu, New Tai Lue, Thai and Lao scripts do not have independent vowel forms. For syllables starting with a vowel sound, a "zero" consonant (ཨ, อ or ອ respectively) is used to represent the glottal stop /ʔ/.
^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.
^ abcdLetters used in Old Sundanese. They are now obsolete.
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 Kadamba/Pallava scripts with the spread of Buddhism sent Brahmic scripts throughout Southeast Asia.[citation needed]
A map of Indo-Aryan languages using their respective Brahmic family scripts (except dark blue colored Khowar, Pashai, Kohistani, and Urdu, not marked here, which use Arabic-derived scripts).
Was used in South Sulawesi, Indonesia for writing the Makassarese language.[11] Makasar script is also known as "Old Makassarese" or "Makassarese bird script" in English-language scholarly works.[12]
^ abFrellesvig, Bjarke (2010). A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 177–178. ISBN978-0-521-65320-6.
^Court, C. (1996). Introduction. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.) The World's Writing Systems (pp. 443). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
^Court, C. (1996). The spread of Brahmi Script into Southeast Asia. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.) The World's Writing Systems (pp. 445–449). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
^Chelliah, Shobhana Lakshmi (1997). A Grammar of Meithei. De Gruyter. p. 355. ISBN3-11-014321-6. In the classification of scripts provided by K. S. Singh and Manoharan ..., Meithei Mayek is part of the Tibetan group of scripts, which originated from the Gupta Brahmi script
