Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the
Brahmic family of alphabetsThe Brahmic family is a family of abugidas used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brāhmī script.The individual writing systems may be called Brahmic scripts or Indic scripts....
. The best known inscriptions in Brāhmī are the rock-cut
edicts of AshokaThe Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, made by the Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty during his reign from 272 to 231 BC. These inscriptions are dispersed throughout the areas of modern-day Pakistan, Nepal and...
in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered the earliest known examples of Brāhmī writing, though the script may be somewhat older due to more recent discoveries suggesting dates as far back as the 6th century BCE (see
Tamil-BrahmiTamil-Brahmi was an early variant of the Brahmi script used to write Tamil characters. It is also known as the Tamili script. It is distinguished from standard Asokan Brahmi, by an inherent vowel marker for pure consonants and consonants.-Origin:...
).
The script was deciphered in 1837 by
James PrinsepJames Prinsep was an Anglo-Indian scholar and antiquary. He was the seventh son of John Prinsep, a wealthy East India merchant and Member of Parliament....
, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the
British East India CompanyThe East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
.
Like its contemporary in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan,
KharoṣṭhīThe script, is an ancient abugida used by the Gandhara culture, nestled in the historic northwest Asian subcontinent to write the Gāndhārī and Sanskrit languages. It was in use from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE...
, Brāhmī was an
abugidaAn abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system which is based on consonants, and in which vowel notation is obligatory but secondary. This contrasts with an alphabet proper, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is...
—a consonantal script augmented by diacritics for vowels.
It was innovative in its presentation, with the alphabet arranged in a grid
(vargaVarga may refer to:* Varga, Hungary, a village in Hungary* Varga , Canadian metal band* Varga , a technical division in Indian astrology*Varga , Filipino comic book character...
) according to
phoneticPhonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and their physiological production, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status.Phonetics was studied as early as 2500 years ago in...
principles.
Brāhmī was ancestral to most of the scripts of
South AsiaSouth Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east...
,
Southeast AsiaManila
Bangkok
Ho Chi Minh City
Kuala Lumpur
Singapore
Yangon
Bandung
Hanoi
Surabaya
Taichung
Kaohsiung
Medan|-|}...
, some
Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
n scripts like
TibetanTibetan can refer to:*Of or relating to Tibet*Tibetan people, an ethnic group*Standard Tibetan language*Tibetan script, a writing system*Tibetan art*Music of Tibet*Tibetan culture*Tibetan food*Tibetan Spaniel dog breed*Tibetan Mastiff dog breed...
and
KhotaneseKhotanese is a form of the Sakan language once spoken in the Kingdom of Khotan. The language is preserved in the texts among the Dunhuang manuscripts, written in a script derived from the Brahmi. These texts have been deciphered and edited by Harold Bailey....
, and possibly
KoreaKorea is a civilization and formerly unified nation currently divided into two states. Located on the Korean Peninsula, it borders China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait....
n
hangulHangul is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logographic Sino-Korean hanja system...
(1444 AD).
Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the
Brahmic family of alphabetsThe Brahmic family is a family of abugidas used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and parts of Central Asia and East Asia, descended from the Brāhmī script.The individual writing systems may be called Brahmic scripts or Indic scripts....
. The best known inscriptions in Brāhmī are the rock-cut
edicts of AshokaThe Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, made by the Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty during his reign from 272 to 231 BC. These inscriptions are dispersed throughout the areas of modern-day Pakistan, Nepal and...
in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered the earliest known examples of Brāhmī writing, though the script may be somewhat older due to more recent discoveries suggesting dates as far back as the 6th century BCE (see
Tamil-BrahmiTamil-Brahmi was an early variant of the Brahmi script used to write Tamil characters. It is also known as the Tamili script. It is distinguished from standard Asokan Brahmi, by an inherent vowel marker for pure consonants and consonants.-Origin:...
).
The script was deciphered in 1837 by
James PrinsepJames Prinsep was an Anglo-Indian scholar and antiquary. He was the seventh son of John Prinsep, a wealthy East India merchant and Member of Parliament....
, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the
British East India CompanyThe East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
.
Like its contemporary in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan,
KharoṣṭhīThe script, is an ancient abugida used by the Gandhara culture, nestled in the historic northwest Asian subcontinent to write the Gāndhārī and Sanskrit languages. It was in use from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE...
, Brāhmī was an
abugidaAn abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system which is based on consonants, and in which vowel notation is obligatory but secondary. This contrasts with an alphabet proper, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is...
—a consonantal script augmented by diacritics for vowels.
It was innovative in its presentation, with the alphabet arranged in a grid
(vargaVarga may refer to:* Varga, Hungary, a village in Hungary* Varga , Canadian metal band* Varga , a technical division in Indian astrology*Varga , Filipino comic book character...
) according to
phoneticPhonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and their physiological production, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status.Phonetics was studied as early as 2500 years ago in...
principles.
Brāhmī was ancestral to most of the scripts of
South AsiaSouth Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east...
,
Southeast AsiaManila
Bangkok
Ho Chi Minh City
Kuala Lumpur
Singapore
Yangon
Bandung
Hanoi
Surabaya
Taichung
Kaohsiung
Medan|-|}...
, some
Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
n scripts like
TibetanTibetan can refer to:*Of or relating to Tibet*Tibetan people, an ethnic group*Standard Tibetan language*Tibetan script, a writing system*Tibetan art*Music of Tibet*Tibetan culture*Tibetan food*Tibetan Spaniel dog breed*Tibetan Mastiff dog breed...
and
KhotaneseKhotanese is a form of the Sakan language once spoken in the Kingdom of Khotan. The language is preserved in the texts among the Dunhuang manuscripts, written in a script derived from the Brahmi. These texts have been deciphered and edited by Harold Bailey....
, and possibly
KoreaKorea is a civilization and formerly unified nation currently divided into two states. Located on the Korean Peninsula, it borders China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait....
n
hangulHangul is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logographic Sino-Korean hanja system...
(1444 AD). The alphabetic order Brāhmī was adopted as the modern order of
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese
kanaKana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the roman alphabet known as rōmaji. There are three kana scripts: modern cursive hiragana , modern angular katakana , and the old syllabic use of kanji known as man’yōgana that was...
, though the letters themselves are unrelated.
Origins
Like Kharoshthi, Brāhmī was used to write the early dialects of
PrakritPrakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Classical Sanskrit and other Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the...
. Its usage was mostly restricted to inscriptions on buildings and graves as well as liturgical texts. Sanskrit was not written until many centuries later. As a result, Brāhmī is not a perfect match for Sanskrit, and several Sanskrit sounds cannot be written in Brāhmī.
The earliest contact of the Hindukush region with alphabetic writing, and Aramaic script in particular, took place in the 6th century BCE with the expansion of the
Achaemenid EmpireThe Achaemenid Empire or Persian Empire was the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran. The Persian and the Median Empire taken together are also known as the Medo-Persian Empire, succeeding the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
as far as the Indus valley under Darius the Great.
The development of the script between the 6th and the 3rd centuries BCE are obscure.
There are some claims dating fragments of Brāhmī epigraphy found in
Sri LankaSri Lanka , officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka , is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India...
and
Tamil NaduTamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai . Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by Puducherry , Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh...
, as far back as the 6th to 5th centuries BCE, taken as evidence for the early spread of
BuddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
. But evidence of pre-Mauryan Brahmi inscriptions remains inconclusive, restricted to pottery fragments with possible individual glyphs. The earliest complete inscriptions remain the 3rd century BCE Ashokan ones, and arguably the
Bhattiprolu scriptThe Bhattiprolu script is a variant of the Brahmi script which has been found in old inscriptopns at Bhattiprolu, a small village in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, south India. It is located in the fertile Krishna river delta and the estuary region where the river meets the bay of Bengal...
which may slightly predate Ashoka. Many early remains show regional variation thought to have developed after a period of unity across India during the Ashokan period.
Possible pre-Ashokan epigraphy
Recent claims for earlier dates include fragments of pottery from the trading town of
AnuradhapuraAnuradhapura, , is one of the ancient capitals of Sri Lanka, famous for its well-preserved ruins of ancient Lankan civilization....
in
Sri LankaSri Lanka , officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka , is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India...
, which have been dated to between the 6th and the early 4th centuries BCE; Bhattiprolu; and on pieces of pottery in
AdichanallurAdichanallur is an archaeological site near Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, India. The town is known locally as Aathichanallur, and has been the site of a number of very important archeological digs.-Archaeological excavations:...
,
Tamil NaduTamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai . Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by Puducherry , Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh...
, which have been radio-carbon dated to the 6th century BCE.
Aramaic hypothesis
Brāhmī is believed by most scholars to be derived or at least influenced by a Semitic abjad such as the Imperial
Aramaic alphabetThe Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet, and became distinctive from it by the eighth century BCE. The letters all represent consonants, some of which are matres lectionis, which also indicate long vowels....
, as was clearly the case for the contemporary
KharosthiThe script, is an ancient abugida used by the Gandhara culture, nestled in the historic northwest Asian subcontinent to write the Gāndhārī and Sanskrit languages. It was in use from the middle of the 3rd century BCE until it died out in its homeland around the 3rd century CE...
alphabet that arose in a part of northwest Indian under the control of the
Achaemenid EmpireThe Achaemenid Empire or Persian Empire was the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran. The Persian and the Median Empire taken together are also known as the Medo-Persian Empire, succeeding the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
.
A glance at the oldest Brāhmī inscriptions shows striking parallels with contemporary Aramaic for the
phonemeIn a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s that are equivalent between the two languages, especially if the letters are flipped to reflect the change in writing direction. (Aramaic is written from right to left, as was Brāhmī originally, whereas Brāhmī later came to be written from left to right.) For example, both Brāhmī and Aramaic
g resemble Λ; both Brāhmī and Aramaic
t resemble ,
etc.
The Brahmi script does feature a number of extensions compared to the Aramaic alphabet.
For example, Aramaic did not distinguish
dentalIn linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages...
from retroflex stops; in the dental and retroflex series are graphically very similar, as if both had been derived from a single prototype. Aramaic did not have Brāhmī’s
aspiratedIn phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say tore ...
consonants (
,
), whereas Brāhmī did not have Aramaic's
emphatic consonantEmphatic consonant is a term widely used in Semitic linguistics to describe one of a series of obstruent consonants which originally contrasted with series of both voiced and voiceless obstruents. In specific Semitic languages the members of this series may be realized as pharyngealized,...
s (
); and it appears that these emphatic letters were used for Brāhmī's aspirates: Aramaic
q for Brāhmī
kh, Aramaic
(Θ) for Brāhmī
th . And just where Aramaic did not have a corresponding emphatic stop,
p, Brāhmī seems to have doubled up for its aspirate: Brāhmī
p and
ph are graphically very similar, as if taken from the same source in Aramaic
p. The first letters of the alphabets also match: Brāhmī
a, which resembled a reversed κ, looks a lot like Aramaic
alef' is the reconstructed name of the first letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician ' , Syriac ' , Hebrew Aleph , and Arabic ' ....
, which resembled Hebrew א. The following table compares Brahmi with Phoenician; Aramaic is generally somewhat closer in appearance.
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Possible derivation of Brahmi from the Phoenician script
|-align=center
|Greek || || || || colspan=2| || || || colspan=2| || || colspan=2| || || colspan=2| || || || colspan=2| || || || colspan=2| || || colspan=2| || || || colspan=2|
|-align=center
|Phoenician || || || || colspan=2| ||
|| || colspan=2|
||
|| colspan=2| ||
|| colspan=2| ||
||
|| colspan=2|
||
||
|| colspan=2| ||
|| colspan=2|
||
|| || colspan=2|
|-align=center
|Brahmi || || || || || || ? || || || || ? || || || || || || || || || || || ? || || || || || || || || ||
|-align=center
|Devanagari || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || || ||
|-align=center
| IAST || || || || || || || || ? || ? || || || || || || || || || || || * || || || || * || || || || * || ||
|-
|}
- Both Phoenician/Aramaic and Brahmi had three voiceless sibilants, but because the alphabetical ordering was lost, the correspondences among them are not clear.
Some scholars, such as
F. Raymond AllchinFrank Raymond Allchin is an archaeologist who specializes in South Asian archaeology. He first visited India in 1944 whilst serving with the army in the Royal Corps of Signals, and from then on his interest in the area grew...
, disputed the script's Aramaic origin, taking Brāhmī as a purely indigenous development, perhaps with Bronze Age
Indus scriptThe term Indus script refers to short strings of symbols associated with the Indus Valley Civilization, in use during the Mature Harappan period, between the 26th and 20th centuries BC. In spite of many attempts at decipherments and claims, it is as yet undeciphered...
as its predecessor.
Ashokan inscriptions
Brāhmī is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of
AshokaAshoka , popularly known as Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from 269 BC to 232 BC. One of India's greatest emperors, Ashoka reigned over most of present-day India after a number of military conquests...
, who used the script
for imperial edictsThe Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, made by the Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty during his reign from 272 to 231 BC. These inscriptions are dispersed throughout the areas of modern-day Pakistan, Nepal and...
. It has commonly been supposed that the script was developed at around this time, both from the paucity of earlier dated examples, the alleged unreliability of those earlier dates, and from the geometric regularity of the script, which some have taken to be evidence that it had been recently invented.
Early regional variants
The earliest Ashokan inscriptions are found across India—apart from the northwest—and are highly uniform. By the third century BCE, regional variants had developed, due to differences in writing materials and to the structure of the languages being written. For example,
Tamil-BrahmiTamil-Brahmi was an early variant of the Brahmi script used to write Tamil characters. It is also known as the Tamili script. It is distinguished from standard Asokan Brahmi, by an inherent vowel marker for pure consonants and consonants.-Origin:...
had a divergent system of vowel notation.
The earliest definite evidence of Brahmi script in
South IndiaSouth India, also known as the Dravida in the Indian anthem, is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of area...
comes from
BhattiproluBhattiprolu is a small village in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh State in Southern India.-History:The original name of Bhattiprolu was Pratipalapura, a flourishing Buddhist town in the ancient Sala kingdom that predated Andhra Satavahanas. From available inscriptional evidence, King Kuberaka was...
in
Andhra PradeshAndhra Pradesh , abbreviated A.P., is a state situated on the south-eastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Hyderabad...
circa 300 BCE. The
Bhattiprolu scriptThe Bhattiprolu script is a variant of the Brahmi script which has been found in old inscriptopns at Bhattiprolu, a small village in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, south India. It is located in the fertile Krishna river delta and the estuary region where the river meets the bay of Bengal...
was written on an urn containing Buddhist relics. The languages were
PrakritPrakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Classical Sanskrit and other Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the...
and old Telugu. Twenty-three letters have been identified. The letters
ga and
sa are similar to Mauryan Brahmi, while
bha and
da resemble those of modern
Telugu scriptTelugu script, an abugida from the Brahmic family of scripts, is used to write Telugu language, a South Central Dravidian Language found in the Southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh as well as several other neighboring states...
.
Characteristics
Brāhmī is usually written from left to right, as in the case of its descendants. However, a coin of the 4th century BCE has been found inscribed with Brāhmī running from right to left, as in Aramaic.
Brāhmī is an
abugidaAn abugida , also called an alphasyllabary, is a segmental writing system which is based on consonants, and in which vowel notation is obligatory but secondary. This contrasts with an alphabet proper, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is...
, meaning that each letter represents a consonant, while vowels are written with obligatory
diacriticA diacritic is an ancillary glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective...
s. When no vowel is written, the vowel /a/ is understood. Special conjunct consonants are used to write
consonant clusterIn linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s such as /pr/ or /rv/.
Vowels following a consonant are written by diacritics, but initial vowels have dedicated letters. There are three vowels in Brāhmī, /a, i, u/;
long vowelsIn linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one such as in Australian English...
are derived from the letters for short vowels. However, there are only five vowel diacritics, as short /a/ is understood if no vowel is written.
Punctuation
Punctuation can be perceived as more of an exception than as a general rule in Asokan Brāhmī. For instance, distinct spaces in between the words appear frequently in the pillar edicts but not so much in others. ("Pillar edicts" refers to the texts that are inscribed on the stone pillars oftentimes with the intention of making them public.) The idea of writing each word separately was not consistently used.
In early Brāhmī period, the existence of punctuation marks is not very well shown. Each letter has been written independently with some space between words and edicts occasionally.
In the middle period, the system seems to be in progress. The use of a dash and a curved horizontal line is found. A flower mark seems to mark the end, and a circular mark appears to indicate the full stop. There seem to be varieties of full stop.
In the late period, the system of interpuctuation marks gets more complicated. For instance, there are four different forms of vertically slanted double dashes that resemble "//" to mark the completion of the composition. Despite all the decorative signs that were available during the late period, the signs remained fairly simple in the inscriptions. One of the possible reasons may be that engraving is restricted while writing is not.
Four basic forms of the punctuation marks can be cited as:
- dash or horizontal bar
- vertical bar
- dot
- circle
Descendants
Over the course of a millennium, Brāhmī developed into numerous regional scripts, commonly classified into a more rounded Southern India group and a more angular Northern India group. Over time, these regional scripts became associated with the local languages. Alphabets of the Southern group spread with Hinduism and Buddhism into
Southeast AsiaManila
Bangkok
Ho Chi Minh City
Kuala Lumpur
Singapore
Yangon
Bandung
Hanoi
Surabaya
Taichung
Kaohsiung
Medan|-|}...
, while the Northern group spread into
TibetTibet is a plateau region in Asia, north of the Himalayas. It is home to the indigenous Tibetan people, and to some other ethnic groups such as Monpas and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han Chinese people. Tibet is the highest region on earth, with an average...
. Today descendants of Brāhmī are used throughout
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
,
Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a country in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
,
Sri LankaSri Lanka , officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka , is an island country in South Asia, located about off the southern coast of India...
,
NepalNepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia and the world's youngest republic. It is bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
,
BhutanThe Kingdom of Bhutan is a landlocked nation in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalaya Mountains and is bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by People's Republic of China. Bhutan is separated from the nearby state of Nepal to the west by...
, Tibet, Burma,
ThailandThe Kingdom of Thailand is an independent country that lies in the heart of Southeast Asia.It is bordered to the north by Laos and Burma, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and Burma...
,
LaosLaos , officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic, is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, bordered by Burma and People's Republic of China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west...
,
CambodiaThe Kingdom of Cambodia , formerly known as Kampuchea , is a country in South East Asia with a population of over 14 million people. The kingdom's capital and largest city is Phnom Penh...
, and in scattered enclaves in
IndonesiaThe Republic of Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia comprises 17,508 islands. With an estimated population of around 237 million people, it is the world's fourth most populous country, with the world's largest population of Muslims.Indonesia is a republic, with an...
, southern China,
VietnamVietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east...
, and the
PhilippinesThe Philippines officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
. As the script of Buddhist scripture, Brahmic alphabets are used for religious purposes throughout
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
,
KoreaKorea is a civilization and formerly unified nation currently divided into two states. Located on the Korean Peninsula, it borders China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the east by the Korea Strait....
,
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, and
VietnamVietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east...
.
Gary Ledyard has been suggested that the basic letters of
hangulHangul is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logographic Sino-Korean hanja system...
were taken from the
Phagspa scriptThe Phags-pa script was an abugida designed by the Tibetan Lama ´Gro-mgon Chos-rgyal ´Phags-pa for the emperor Kublai Khan during the Yuan Dynasty in China, as a unified script for all languages within the Yuan Dynasty, although...
of the
Mongol EmpireThe Mongol Empire was an empire from the 13th and 14th century spanning from Eastern Europe across Asia. It is the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world...
, itself a derivative of the Brahmic Tibetan alphabet.
Canadian Aboriginal syllabicsCanadian Aboriginal syllabic writing, or simply syllabics, is a family of abugidas used to write a number of Aboriginal Canadian languages of the Algonquian, Inuit, and Athabaskan language families....
also show systematic similarity with principles and characters of Brāhmī.
Further reading
- Kenneth R. Norman, The Development of Writing in India and its Effect upon the Pâli Canon, in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens (36), 1993
- Oscar von Hinüber, Der Beginn der Schrift und frühe Schriftlichkeit in Indien, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990 (in German)
- Gérard Fussman, Les premiers systèmes d'écriture en Inde, in Annuaire du Collège de France 1988-1989 (in French)
- Siran Deraniyagala, The prehistory of Sri Lanka; an ecological perspective (revised ed.), Archaeological Survey Department of Sri Lanka, 1992.
External links