Makasar script
historical script used to write Makassarese
The Makasar script, also known as Ukiri' Jangang-jangang (bird's script) or Old Makasar script, is a historical Indonesian writing system that was used in South Sulawesi to write the Makassarese language between the 17th and 19th centuries until it was supplanted by the Lontara Bugis script.
The Makasar script is an abugida which consists of 18 basic characters. Like other Brahmic scripts, each letter represents a syllable with an inherent vowel /a/, which can be changed with diacritics. The direction of writing is left to right. This script is written without wordspacing (scriptio continua) and with little to no punctuation. "Coda syllables", or consonants at the end of syllables, are not written in the Makasar script, so a Makasar text can contain a lot of ambiguity which can only be distinguished from context.
History
Scholars generally believe that the Makasar script was used before South Sulawesi received significant Islamic influence around the 16th century AD, based on the fact that Makasar script uses the abugida system based on the Brahmi script rather than the Arabic script which became commonplace in South Sulawesi later on. This script has its roots in the Brahmi script from southern India, possibly brought to Sulawesi through the Kawi script or another script derived from Kawi. The visual similarity of the South Sumatran characters such as the Rejang script and the Makasar script has led some experts to suggest a relationship between the two scripts. Christopher Miller states that the Makasar script is essentially derived from a pre-17th century variant of Ulu scripts of South Sumatra, with some influence from the Javanese script.
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This entry incorporates text from “Makasar script” 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.