Forum Pakistan

Indo Aryans See, Arya.
Indo Aryan Writing Systems
The name for an extensive group of South and Southeast Asian writing systems linked by a community of origin and a uniform (phonetic) principle of alphabet structure. Apart from their native country India, variations of Indian writing systems were, and still are, widespread in neighbouring areas such as Tibet and Central Asia as far as Mongolia in the north, and Sri Lanka, Myanmar, on the peninsula of Indo-China, Indonesia and the Philippines in the south-east. Indian writing systems spread to neighbouring countries in the first and early second millennium largely due to the spreading of Buddhism and associated literature and writings.

Writing systems in South Asia are approximately five thousand years old. The oldest type of writing system is represented by the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the *Harappan civilization (third millennium BC). The Kharoshthi or Indo-Bactrian writing system emerged in India at this time, surviving until the third century AD. Kharosh was written right to left and can be traced back to Aramaeic script. Simultaneously, the Brahmi syllabic system functioned in India. Brahmi was of local origin and served as the source of all later proper Indian writing systems. Like Kharoshthi, it was written left to right. Even the earliest monuments in Brahim (third century BC to fifth century AD) show signs of differences between its local styles. On this basis, two main branches of Indian writing systems evolved, northern and southern.

The latter gave rise to a third, the outh-eastern. The following principal kinds of writing are singled out in the northern branch. Their alphabets are marked by angular shapes of letters with straight vertical and horizontal strokes: 1. Siddhamatrika, known from monuments of the sixth and seventh centuries in the territory of modern Bihar; 2. Vertical and slanting Central Asian Brahrni (also called *Gupta Script), used to record texts in Sanskrit, Saka, Kuchean and other languages; from the sixth to the tenth century in Central Asia; 3. Tibetan writing, evolved in the seventh century and is still used in several varieties, including the canonical dwo-can and the cursive (dwumed); 4. The Nagari script, which developed in the seventh and eighth centuries (the monumental type) and was first recorded in MSS in the tenth and eleventh centuries; 5. A later derived script from of Nagari called Devanagari, which now occupies a central place among the alphabets of North India and is used for Hindi, Marathi, and some other languages of South Asia and their dialects, as well as for recording and publication of Sanskrit texts; 6. Sharada, which has been in use in *Kashmir since the eighth century, 7. Nevari has been used since the twelfth century and is a Nepali writing system, now giving way to Devanagari; 8. Bengali script, used for Bengali and Assamese languages, as well as for Sanskrit, which evolved in the fifteenth century, though its early 'proto-Bengali' form were first recorded in the eleventh century; 9. The Oriya script; its distinctive feature is that its letters are inscribed within an arc corresponding to the upper horizontal line in the letters of other alphabets; 10. The *Gujarati script, which developed from a cursive variety of Nagari known as Kaithi; its distinguishing mark is the absence of an upper horizontal stroke in the letters; 11. Gurmukhi, a *Punjabi script introduced in the sixteenth century by *Sikhs. Apart from these, there are a great number of MS and cursive forms used in private correspondence, and commercial and business records. Distinct local variations include Kaithi (throughout the area in which Hindi is spoken), Mahajani (in Rajasthan and among tradesmen who come from this state), *Lahnda (in the Punjab and *Sindh, where the printed form of this writing has also evolved), Modi (in Maharashtra), Takri (in the foothills of the Himalayas), Manipuri (in Manipur), and others.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: G. BUhler, 'lndische Palaeography', Strasbourg, 1986; 'Contemporary Indian Printed Alphabets:
The Short Literary Encyclopaedia', Vol. 3, Columns 141-2 (in Russian); 'The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia', 3rd ed., Vol. 10 (in Russian).