Modi script
Encyclopedia
is one of the scripts used to write the Marathi language
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

& Rajasthani language
Rajasthani language
Rajasthani Rajasthani Rajasthani (Devanagari: , Perso-Arabic: is a language of the Indo-Aryan languages family. It is spoken by 50 million people in Rajasthan and other states of India and in some areas of Pakistan. The number of speakers may be up to 80 million worldwide...

, which is the primary language spoken in the state of Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

 & Rajasthan
Rajasthan
Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...

 in western India
India
India , 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 with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 respectively. MoDi(मोडी)is also known as MuDiya(मुडिया), MuDi(मुडी) & VañiyāvaTi(वाणीयावटी). It had also earned certain infamous adjectives such as Bhoot lipi(भूत लिपी), Rakshas lipi(राक्षस लिपी), Pishacch lipi(पिशाच्च लिपी) due to its tendency to waiver from the accepted standard norms of a written script. There are several theories about the origin of this script. One of them claims that it was developed by Hemadpant
Hemadpant
Hemādri Pandit, also known as Hemādpant, was a prime minister from 1259 to 1274 C.E. in the regimes of King Mahādev and King Rāmchandra of Seuna Yādav Dynasty of Devagiri, which ruled in the southwestern part of India.- Origin :...

 (or Hemadri Pandit) during the reign of Mahadev Yadav and Ramdev Yadav (1260–1309)of Deogiri. Others claim that it was brought by Hemandpant from Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

. It is a popular notion that only Marathi is written in Modi. Other languages that have also been found to have been written in Modi are Hindi, Sindhi, Urdu, Brajbhasha, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu and Tamil.

The MoDi script is divided into 6 categories (periods) viz., the Ancient period(आद्यकालीन), the Yadav period(यादवकालीन), the Bahamani period(बहमनीकालीन), the Shiv period(शिवकालीन), the Peshwe period(पेशवेकालीन) and the English period(आंग्लकालीन). The form of the Ancient period(आद्यकालीन) is still not known whereas, the only sample of the Yadav period(यादवकालीन) is preserved at the Dept. of Archives, Aurangabad, Maharashtra.

Primarily this epithet has most probably been derived from the verb "modane" (मोडणे) meaning to break in Marathi. Modi is essentially prepared by breaking original Devanagari characters and so that should be considered the proper etymology however, there are also other experts who believe that the word 'Modi' could have been derived from the word 'Mouryi' which indicates the origin or derivation of Modi from an earlier 'Mouryi' script used during the reign of the Maurya dynasty who ruled India during 322–185 BCE. However, there is no resemblance in these two scripts so that this opinion is no more considered valid. Modi, it is believed, was developed as a faster way of writing as compared to the more complicated Devanagari
Devanagari
Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...

 script. This was done by "breaking" some of the characters of the alphabet (to make them simpler) and also by making them more "circular" in shape, which aided in moving from one character to the next without lifting the pen from the paper. Thus, Modi was a sort of "cursive
Cursive
Cursive, also known as joined-up writing, joint writing, or running writing, is any style of handwriting in which the symbols of the language are written in a simplified and/or flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing easier or faster...

" style of writing , although reading it may not have been as easy.
Modi has had a major use as a shorthand
Shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos and graphē or graphie...

 script for faster writing in business and other administration. Modi does not take account of vowel length, and does not include conjunct consonants like Devanagari and some other Indic scripts.

A Modi clip font
Clip font
Clip fonts or split fonts are outline fonts that assign glyphs representing partial characters of the Indian scripts, especially Devanagari, at code positions intended for characters of the Latin script. Clip fonts are also a technique in use in India to produce complex glyphs for which no...

 kotem1 developed by Ashok Kothare, is now available.
Hemadree font developed by Somesh Bartakke; ModiGhate font developed by Sameer Ghate & Khilari 2 font developed by Rajesh Khilari is available now.

Even today most of the printed material in Modi is handwritten. Using offset printing
Offset printing
Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...

 machines, previously Lithography
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...

 printing was in vogue. However, Devanagari has been the main script for all Marathi literature and other writings from the beginning. Modi was used primarily by political and administrative people as well as businessmen in keeping their accounts and writing Hundis. Modi was also used to encrypt the message since not all people were well versed in reading this script. All Marathi writing has been written and printed in the Devanagari
Devanagari
Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...

 script, which is the same script as is used to write Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...

 and some other Indian
Languages of India
The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages...

 languages.

Some linguists in Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...

have recently begun trying to revive the script. There is a project underway to encode Modi in
the Unicode standard.

External links

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