Nāgarī script

Nāgarī
The word Nāgarī in the Nāgarī script.
Script type
Period
c. 980-1010 CE
Languages
Related scripts
Parent systems
Child systems
Sister systems
Bengali-Assamese script, Odia script, Nepalese
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
Shravasti Bodhisattva statue with 1st-century Brahmi script (first three lines) and 9th-century Nagari script (last line).

The Nāgarī script or Early Nagari is the ancestor of Devanagari, Nandinagari and other variants, and was first used to write Prakrit and Sanskrit. The term is sometimes used as a synonym for Devanagari script. It came in vogue during the first millennium CE.

The Nāgarī script has roots in the ancient Brahmi script family. The Nāgarī script was in regular use by 7th century CE, and had fully evolved into Devanagari and Nandinagari scripts by about the end of first millennium of the common era.

Etymology

Nagari is a vṛddhi derivation from नगर (nagara), which means city.

History

Origins

Nāgarī belongs to the Brahmic family of scripts. It is part of the northern branch of the Indian Brahmic scripts. Singh (1991) traces the development of Nāgarī through Mauryan Brāhmī and continuing through the regional varieties conventionally designated as Śuṅga, Kṣatrapa, Kuṣāṇa, Gupta and Later Gupta scripts. Changes in writing technique affected the development of the shape of the early script. The increasing use of cursive writing encouraged changes from angular to more rounded or flowing forms, while different writing materials, including stone, copper plates, birch-bark and palm leaf, affected the appearance of individual letters. Scribal habits and regional traditions further contributed to variation.

By the 6th century 'Kuṭila' or 'Siddhamātṛkā', a descendant from the Gupta script, forms as a major intermediate stage in the northern Indian Brahmic script tradition. Changes in its consonants, vowels, medial signs and ligatures can be traced towards later Nāgarī forms. By the end of the seventh century A.D. the proto-Nagari script developed in the region of Malwa. This Proto-Nagari script shows broader triangular head-marks, or replaces them with a small stroke; and tails or footmarks are added to the bottom of the letters. The Kuṭila script developed its final form between the ninth and tenth centuries, and subsequently transforms into a mature form of the Nagari script. Scholars disagree on the exact point in time of this transition. During this period, forms displaying characteristic features of Nāgarī became increasingly widespread. Among these was the increasing prominence of the horizontal head-line, alongside changes in the proportions and shapes of consonants and vowel signs. These features did not appear simultaneously in every region, and different areas retained older forms while developing other new features.

Singh identifies the 11th to 13th centuries as the age of maturity of the Nāgarī script. By this period its principal characteristics such as the top-stroke, straight vertical line, halanta sign, uniform medial signs and mutilated initial consonant in ligatures had become established. The earliest attestations of the mature Nāgarī script date to 983 and 1008 AD. The script was in use in the Ganges Valley, Central India, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Western India and the Deccan by the 11th century AD.

Regional varieties and descendant scripts

The maturation of Nāgarī was accompanied by the emergence of regional forms. These should not be understood as the products of a single branching event, since the relationships among the various scripts were shaped by regional writing traditions and continued to change over time.

In northern and central India, Nāgarī became increasingly associated with Sanskrit and eventually with a number of regional languages. The form subsequently known as Devanāgarī became the principal standardized form of the Nagari tradition. Salomon places the development of standardized Devanāgarī around the end of the first millennium, while noting that regional and chronological variation continued.

Nandināgarī represents an important southern form of the Nāgarī tradition. It was used particularly for Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions in southern India and the Deccan. Singh distinguishes Nandināgarī from Nāgarī and Jaina-Nāgarī in his comparative palaeographic material, showing both its relationship to the wider Nāgarī tradition and its distinctive letter forms.

In western India, the Gujarati script developed from a Nāgarī-derived writing tradition. Singh associates Gujarati and other cursive scripts with the practical requirements of rapid handwriting. Salomon likewise identifies Gujarati as one of the local scripts that developed out of Nāgarī, alongside scripts such as Moḍī and Kāyethī. The modern Gujarati script became visually distinct from Nāgarī, most notably through the disappearance of the continuous horizontal head-line.

Usage outside India

Inscriptions in early forms of the Nagari script are also found outside of India, in Sri Lanka, Burma and Indonesia. The Belanjong pillar found on Bali, features a 10th century Nagari inscription.

Although the Kawi script was the dominant script used in the great majority of inscriptions on Java, a small number of Sanskrit inscriptions in the south-central regions of the island are written in the Early Nāgarī script. The earliest inscriptions found in Early Nāgarī are from around the 10th century CE, with many more between the 11th and 14th centuries. Some of the old-Devanāgarī inscriptions are found in Hindu temples of Java, such as the Prambanan temple. The Ligor and the Kalasan inscriptions of central Java, dated to the 8th century, are also in the Nāgarī script of north India. According to the epigraphist and Asian Studies scholar Lawrence Briggs, these may be related to the 9th century copper plate inscription of Devapaladeva (Bengal) which is also in early Devanāgarī script. The term kawi in Kawi script is a loan word from kāvya (poetry). According to anthropologists and Asian studies scholars John Norman Miksic and Goh Geok Yian, the 8th-century version of early Nāgarī or Devanāgarī script was adopted in Java, Bali, and Khmer around the 8th–9th centuries, as evidenced by the many contemporaneous inscriptions of this period.

The 7th century Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo ordered that all foreign books be transcribed into the Tibetan language, and sent his ambassador Tonmi Sambota to India to acquire alphabetic and writing methods, who returned with a Sanskrit Nāgarī script from Kashmir corresponding to twenty-four (24) Tibetan sounds and innovating new symbols for six (6) local sounds.

The museum in Mrauk-u (Mrohaung) in the Rakhine state of Myanmar held in 1972 two examples of Nāgarī script. Archaeologist Aung Thaw describes these inscriptions, associated with the Chandra, or Candra, dynasty that first hailed from the ancient Indian city of Vesáli:

... epigraphs in mixed Sanskrit and Pali in North-eastern Nāgarī script of the 6th century dedicated by [Queen] Niti Candra and [King] Vira Candra

— Aung Thaw, Historical sites in Burma (1972)

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Singh 1991, p. 102.
  2. ↑ Salomon 1998, p. 39-41.
  3. 1 2 Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography, R. Malatesha Joshi, Catherine McBride(2019), p. 27
  4. ↑ Daniels, P.T. (January 2008). "Writing systems of major and minor languages". Journal missing.
  5. 1 2 Masica, Colin (1993). The Indo-Aryan languages. p. 143.
  6. ↑ Salomon 1998, p. 81.
  7. ↑ D.R. Sahni (1911), Sahet-Mahet plate of Govinda Chandra Samvat 1186, Epigraphia Indica, Volume XI, pp. 20–26
  8. ↑ Tripathi, Kunjabihari (1962). The Evolution of Oriya Language and Script. Utkal University. p. 28. Retrieved 21 March 2021. Northern Nāgarī (almost identical with modern Nagari)
  9. 1 2 Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, ISBN 978-1615301492, page 83
  10. 1 2 George Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, ISBN 978-0415772945, pages 68-69
  11. ↑ "Devanagari through the ages". India Central Hindi Directorate (Instituut voor Toegepaste Sociologie te Nijmegen). University of California. 1967.
  12. ↑ Salomon 1998, p. 33-47.
  13. ↑ Pandey, Anshuman. (2017). Final proposal to encode Nandinagari in Unicode.
  14. ↑ Monier Williams Online Dictionary, nagara, Cologne Sanskrit Digital Lexicon, Germany
  15. ↑ Singh 1991, p. 19-24.
  16. ↑ Singh 1991, p. 36-39.
  17. ↑ Singh 1991, p. 47.
  18. ↑ Salomon 1998, p. 32-41.
  19. ↑ Singh 1991, p. 54.
  20. ↑ Singh 1991, p. 70.
  21. ↑ Singh 1991, p. 70-101.
  22. ↑ Salomon 1998, p. 39-42.
  23. ↑ Salomon 1998, p. 41.
  24. ↑ Singh 1991, p. 176-177.
  25. ↑ Singh 1991, p. 178.
  26. 1 2 Salomon 1998, p. 41-42.
  27. ↑ Salomon, Richard (2007). "Writing Systems of the Indo-Aryan Languages": 82. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  28. ↑ Ardika, Wayan (2009). Hermann, Elfriede; et al. (eds.). Form, Macht, Differenz: Motive und Felder ethnologischen Forschens (in German). Universitätsverlag Göttingen. pp. 251–252. ISBN 978-3940344809. Nagari script and Sanskrit language in the inscription at Blangjong suggests that Indian culture was already influencing Bali (Indonesia) by the 10th century CE.
  29. ↑ de Casparis, J. G. (1975). Indonesian Palaeography: A History of Writing in Indonesia from the Beginnings to c. AD 1500. BRILL Academic. pp. 35–43. ISBN 90-04-04172-9. Archived from the original on 13 March 2020. Retrieved 28 October 2018.
  30. ↑ Zurbuchen, Mary S. (1976). Introduction to Old Javanese Language and Literature: A Kawi Prose Anthology. Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan. pp. xi–xii. ISBN 978-0-89148-053-2. Archived from the original on 27 February 2020. Retrieved 28 October 2018.
  31. ↑ Briggs, Lawrence Palmer (1950). "The Origin of the Sailendra Dynasty: Present Status of the Question". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 70 (2). JSTOR: 79–81. doi:10.2307/595536. ISSN 0003-0279. JSTOR 595536.
  32. ↑ Miksic, John Norman; Yian, Goh Geok (2016). Ancient Southeast Asia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 177–179, 314–322. ISBN 978-1-317-27904-4. Archived from the original on 6 March 2020. Retrieved 28 October 2018.
  33. ↑ William Woodville Rockhill, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, p. 671, at Google Books, United States National Museum, page 671
  34. ↑ Aung Thaw (1972). Historical sites in Burma. Rangoon: Ministry of Union Culture, Government of the Union of Burma. OCLC 65722346.

Bibliography