Devanāgarī

Script Details

Devanāgarī

A Devanagari manuscript

By Ms Sarah Welch - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73934958

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Inspired by image https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Devanagari_Verbreitung.svg “Devanagari Verbreitung” by Furfur licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

DISCLAIMER: This script is still being researched

Data

Alternate Names Nāgarī
ISO 15924 Deva 315
Type Abugida
Family Indic
Direction LTR
Diacritics Yes
Contextual Forms Yes
Capitals Used No
Glyphs 48
Inventor Unknown
Earliest Location Northwest India
Earliest Date 1100 CE
Latest Date Present
Ancestry

Overview

“The Devanagari script is used for writing classical Sanskrit and its modern historical derivative, Hindi. Extensions to the Sanskrit repertoire are used to write other related languages of India (such as Marathi) and of Nepal (Nepali). In addition, the Devanagari script is used to write the following languages: Awadhi, Bagheli, Bhatneri, Bhili, Bihari, Braj Bhasha, Chhattisgarhi, Garhwali, Gondi (Betul, Chhindwara, and Mandla dialects), Harauti, Ho, Jaipuri, Kachchhi, Kanauji, Konkani, Kului, Kumaoni, Kurku, Kurukh, Marwari, Mundari, Newari, Palpa, and Santali.

All other Indic scripts, as well as the Sinhala script of Sri Lanka, the Tibetan script, and the Southeast Asian scripts, are historically connected with the Devanagari script as descendants of the ancient Brahmi script. The entire family of scripts shares a large number of structural features.“ - The Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Standard, Version 15.0, p. 463

Bibliography

Author Year Publication Publisher
Bright, William 1996 The World's Writing Systems, The Devanagari Script, 384-390 Oxford University Press
Coulmas, Florian 1999 The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, 110-136 Blackwell Publishing
Jamison, Stephanie 2004 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Worlds Ancient Languages, Sanskrit, 673-699 Cambridge University Press
Jamison, Stephanie 2004 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Worlds Ancient Languages, Middle Indic, 700-716 Cambridge University Press
King, Robert D. 2001 The poisonous potency of script: Hindi and Urdu, Vol. 150, p. 43-59 International Journal of the Sociology of Language
The Unicode Consortium 2022 Chapter 12.1: Devanagari, The Unicode Standard, Version 15.0; p. 463-488 The Unicode Consortium