Brahmic scripts
family of abugida writing systems
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used by various languages in several language families in South, East, Central and Southeast Asia: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Turkic, Mongolic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, and Tai. They were also the source of the dictionary order (gojūon) of Japanese kana.
History
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.
The Siddhaṃ script was especially important in Buddhism, as many sutras were written in it. The art of Siddham calligraphy survives today in Japan. The tabular presentation and dictionary order of the modern kana system of Japanese writing is believed to be descended from the Indic scripts, most likely through the spread of Buddhism.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brahmic scripts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.