Devanagari Numeral 5 var 2.png
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right
abugida An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel n ...
(a type of segmental
writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable fo ...
), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī'' script, used in the northern
Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
. It was developed and in regular use by the 7th century CE. The Devanagari script, composed of 47 primary characters, including 14 vowels and 33 consonants, is the fourth most widely adopted writing system in the world, being used for over 120 languages.Devanagari (Nagari)
, Script Features and Description, SIL International (2013), United States
The
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
of this script reflects the pronunciation of the language. Unlike the Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of
letter case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
. It is written from left to right, has a strong preference for symmetrical rounded shapes within squared outlines, and is recognisable by a horizontal line, known as a ''shirorekhā'', that runs along the top of full letters. In a cursory look, the Devanagari script appears different from other Indic scripts such as Bengali-Assamese, or
Gurmukhi Gurmukhī ( pa, ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ, , Shahmukhi: ) is an abugida developed from the Laṇḍā scripts, standardized and used by the second Sikh guru, Guru Angad (1504–1552). It is used by Punjabi Sikhs to write the language, commonly ...
, but a closer examination reveals they are very similar except for angles and structural emphasis. Among the languages using it – either as their only script or as one of their scripts – are
Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...
,
Pāḷi Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhis ...
,
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
(the ancient Nagari script for Sanskrit had two additional consonantal characters),
Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
,
Boro __NOTOC__ Boro may refer to: People * Boro people, indigenous peoples of Amazonas, Brazil * A variant spelling for the Bodo people of northeast India * Charan Boro, Indian politician * Isaac Adaka Boro, a celebrated Niger Delta nationalist and Nig ...
, Nepali,
Sherpa Sherpa may refer to: Ethnography * Sherpa people, an ethnic group in north eastern Nepal * Sherpa language Organizations and companies * Sherpa (association), a French network of jurists dedicated to promoting corporate social responsibility * ...
,
Prakrit The Prakrits (; sa, prākṛta; psu, 𑀧𑀸𑀉𑀤, ; pka, ) are a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usu ...
, Apabhramsha,
Awadhi Awadhi (; ), also known as Audhi (), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in northern India and Nepal. It is primarily spoken in the Awadh region of present-day Uttar Pradesh, India. The name ''Awadh'' is connected to Ayodhya, the ancient city ...
, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha, Chhattisgarhi,
Haryanvi Haryanvi ( ' or '), also known as Bangru, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the state of Haryana in India, and to a lesser extent in Delhi. Haryanvi is considered to be part of the dialect group of Western Hindi, which also includes Kharib ...
,
Magahi The Magahi language (), also known as Magadhi (), is a language spoken in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal states of eastern India, and in the Terai of Nepal. Magadhi Prakrit was the ancestor of Magahi, from which the latter's name derives. ...
, Nagpuri,
Rajasthani Rajasthani may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Rajasthan, a state of India * Rajasthani languages, a group of languages spoken there * Rajasthani people, the native inhabitants of the region * Rajasthani architecture * Rajasthani art ...
, Bhili,
Dogri Dogri ( Name Dogra Akkhar: ; Devanagari: डोगरी; Nastaliq: ; ) is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir, India, with smaller groups of speakers in adjoining regions of western Himachal Prad ...
,
Kashmiri Kashmiri may refer to: * People or things related to the Kashmir Valley or the broader region of Kashmir * Kashmiris, an ethnic group native to the Kashmir Valley * Kashmiri language, their language People with the name * Kashmiri Saikia Baruah ...
, Konkani, Sindhi,
Nepal Bhasa Newar (), or Newari and known officially in Nepal as Nepal Bhasa, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the Newar people, the indigenous inhabitants of Nepal Mandala, which consists of the Kathmandu Valley and surrounding regions in Nepa ...
, Mundari, and Santali. The Devanagari script is closely related to the
Nandinagari Nandinagari is a Brahmic script derived from the Nāgarī script which appeared in the 7th century AD.George Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, , page 75 This script and its variants were used in the central Dec ...
script commonly found in numerous ancient manuscripts of
South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territ ...
, and it is distantly related to a number of southeast Asian scripts.


Etymology

''Devanagari'' is a compound of " ''deva''" () and " ''nāgarī''" (). ''Deva'' means "heavenly or divine" and is also one of the terms for a deity in
Hinduism Hinduism () is an Indian religion or '' dharma'', a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with over 1.2–1.35 billion followers, or 15–16% of the global p ...
.Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary” Etymologically and Philologically Arranged to cognate Indo-European Languages, Motilal Banarsidass, page 492 '' Nagari'' comes from (''nagaram'') a Sanskrit word which means town. Hence, ''Devanagari'' denotes ''from the abode of divinity or deities''. ' is the Sanskrit feminine of ' "relating or belonging to a town or city, urban". It is a phrasing with ''lipi'' ("script") as ' "script relating to a city", or "spoken in city". Devanagari Script known as 'Script of the divine city' came from Devanagara or the 'city of the god'. And hence interpret it as " cript ofthe city of the gods". The use of the name ' emerged from the older term '. According to Fischer, Nagari emerged in the northwest Indian subcontinent around 633 CE, was fully developed by the 11th-century, and was one of the major scripts used for the Sanskrit literature.


History

Devanagari is part of the
Brahmic family The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
of scripts of
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
,
Nepal Nepal (; ne, :ne:नेपाल, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in S ...
,
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Taman ...
, and
Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainlan ...
. It is a descendant of the 3rd century BCE
Brahmi script Brahmi (; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' ...
, which evolved into the
Nagari script Nagari may refer to: Writing systems * Nāgarī script, a script used in India during the first millennium * Devanagari, a script used since the late first millennium and currently in widespread use for the languages of northern India * Nandinag ...
which in turn gave birth to Devanagari and
Nandinagari Nandinagari is a Brahmic script derived from the Nāgarī script which appeared in the 7th century AD.George Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, , page 75 This script and its variants were used in the central Dec ...
. Devanagari has been widely adopted across India and Nepal to write
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
,
Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...
,
Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
,
Central Indo-Aryan languages The Central Indo-Aryan languages or Hindi languages are a group of related language varieties Spoken across North India and Central India. These language varieties form the central part of the Indo-Aryan language family, itself a part of the ...
, Konkani,
Boro __NOTOC__ Boro may refer to: People * Boro people, indigenous peoples of Amazonas, Brazil * A variant spelling for the Bodo people of northeast India * Charan Boro, Indian politician * Isaac Adaka Boro, a celebrated Niger Delta nationalist and Nig ...
, and various Nepalese languages. Some of the earliest epigraphical evidence attesting to the developing
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
Nagari script Nagari may refer to: Writing systems * Nāgarī script, a script used in India during the first millennium * Devanagari, a script used since the late first millennium and currently in widespread use for the languages of northern India * Nandinag ...
in ancient India is from the 1st to 4th century CE inscriptions discovered in
Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...
., Rudradaman’s inscription from 1st through 4th century CE found in Gujarat, India, Stanford University Archives, pages 30–45, particularly Devanagari inscription on Jayadaman's coins pages 33–34 Variants of script called ''Nāgarī'', recognisably close to Devanagari, are first attested from the 1st century CE Rudradaman inscriptions in Sanskrit, while the modern standardised form of Devanagari was in use by about 1000 CE.Richard Salomon (2014), Indian Epigraphy, Oxford University Press, , pages 40–42 Medieval inscriptions suggest widespread diffusion of the Nagari-related scripts, with biscripts presenting local script along with the adoption of Nagari scripts. For example, the mid 8th-century Pattadakal pillar in
Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
has text in both Siddha Matrika script, and an early
Telugu-Kannada The Kannada–Telugu script (or Telugu–kannada script) was a writing system used in Southern India. Despite some differences, the scripts used for the Kannada and Telugu languages remain quite similar and highly mutually intelligible. Histor ...
script; while, the Kangra
Jawalamukhi Jawalamukhi, also Jawalaji, is a Shakti Pitha town and a nagar parishad in Kangra district in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Hindu genealogy registers are kept here like that of Haridwar. The Hindi word 'Jwalamukhi' literally means 'Volc ...
inscription in
Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen mountain states and is characterized by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks ...
is written in both Sharada and Devanagari scripts.Richard Salomon (2014), Indian Epigraphy, Oxford University Press, , page 71 The Nagari script was in regular use by the 7th century CE, and it was fully developed by about the end of first millennium. The use of Sanskrit in Nagari script in medieval India is attested by numerous pillar and cave temple inscriptions, including the 11th-century Udayagiri inscriptions in
Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the seco ...
, and an inscribed brick found in
Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...
, dated to be from 1217 CE, which is now held at the
British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
. The script's proto- and related versions have been discovered in ancient relics outside of India, such as in Sri Lanka,
Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
and
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
; while in East Asia, ''Siddha Matrika'' script considered as the closest precursor to Nagari was in use by Buddhists. Nagari has been the '' primus inter pares'' of the Indic scripts.George Cardona and Danesh Jain (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, , pages 75–77 It has long been used traditionally by religiously educated people in
South Asia South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth descr ...
to record and transmit information, existing throughout the land in parallel with a wide variety of local scripts (such as
Modi Narendra Damodardas Modi (; born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician serving as the 14th and current Prime Minister of India since 2014. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Parliament from ...
,
Kaithi Kaithi (), also called Kayathi () or Kayasthi (), is a historical Brahmic script that was used widely in parts of Northern and Eastern India, primarily in the present-day states of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar. In particular, it was us ...
, and Mahajani script, Mahajani) used for administration, commerce, and other daily uses. Sharada remained in parallel use in Kashmir. An early version of Devanagari is visible in the Kutila inscription of Bareilly dated to Vikram Samvat 1049 (i.e. 992 CE), which demonstrates the emergence of the horizontal bar to group letters belonging to a word. One of the oldest surviving Sanskrit texts from the early post-Maurya Empire, Maurya period consists of 1,413 Nagari pages of a commentary by Patanjali, with a composition date of about 150 BCE, the surviving copy transcribed about 14th century CE.


East Asia

In the 7th century, under the rule of Songtsen Gampo of the Tibetan Empire, Thonmi Sambhota was sent to Nepal to open marriage negotiations with a
Nepal Nepal (; ne, :ne:नेपाल, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in S ...
i princess and to find a writing system suitable for the Classical Tibetan, Tibetan language. Thus he invented the Tibetan script, based on the Nagari used in Kashmir. He added 6 new characters for sounds that did not exist in Sanskrit. Other scripts closely related to Nagari such as Siddham Matrka were in use in Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan and other parts of East Asia by the 7th to 10th centuries.Richard Salomon (2014), Indian Epigraphy, Oxford University Press, , pages 157–160 Most of the southeast Asian scripts have roots in the Dravidian scripts, except for a few found in south-central regions of Java and isolated parts of southeast Asia that resemble Devanagari or its prototype. The Kawi script in particular is similar to the Devanagari in many respects though the morphology of the script has local changes. The earliest inscriptions in the Devanagari-like scripts are from around the 10th century, with many more between 11th and 14th centuries. Some of the old-Devanagari 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 Nagari 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 Devanagari script. The term Kawi in Kawi script is a loan word from ''Kavya'' (poetry). According to anthropologists and Asian studies scholars John Norman Miksic and Goh Geok Yian, the 8th-century version of early Nagari or Devanagari script was adopted in Java, Bali, Bali (Indonesia), and Khmer (Cambodia) around 8th or 9th centuries, as evidenced by the many inscriptions of this period.


Letters

The collating sequence, letter order of Devanagari, like nearly all Brahmic scripts, is based on phonetics, phonetic principles that consider both the manner of articulation, manner and place of articulation of the consonants and vowels they represent. This arrangement is usually referred to as the ' "garland of letters". The format of Devanagari for Sanskrit serves as the prototype for its application, with minor variations or additions, to other languages.


Vowels

The vowels and their arrangement are: # Arranged with the vowels are two consonantal diacritics, the final nasal stop, nasal ''anusvāra'' ' and the final fricative ''visarga'' ' (called ' and '').'' notes of the ''anusvāra'' in Sanskrit that "there is some controversy as to whether it represents a homorganic nasal stop [...], a nasalized vowel, nasalised vowel, a nasalised semivowel, or all these according to context". The ''visarga'' represents post-vocalic voiceless glottal fricative , in Sanskrit an allophone of '','' or less commonly '','' usually in word-final position. Some traditions of recitation append an echo of the vowel after the breath: . considers the ''visarga'' along with letters ' and ' for the "largely predictable" velar nasal, velar and palatal nasals to be examples of "phonetic overkill in the system". # Another diacritic is the ''Chandrabindu, candrabindu''/''anunāsika'' . describes it as a "more emphatic form" of the '','' "sometimes [...] used to mark a true [vowel] nasalization". In a New Indo-Aryan language such as Hindi the distinction is formal: the ' indicates nasalized vowel, vowel nasalisation while the ' indicates a homorganic nasal stop, nasal preceding another consonant: e.g., "laughter", "the Ganges". When an ''akṣara'' has a vowel diacritic above the top line, that leaves no room for the ''candra'' ("moon") stroke ''candrabindu,'' which is dispensed with in favour of the lone dot: "am", but "are". Some writers and typesetters dispense with the "moon" stroke altogether, using only the dot in all situations. # The ''avagraha'' (usually transliteration, transliterated with an apostrophe) is a Sanskrit punctuation mark for the elision of a vowel in sandhi: ' ( ← ' + ') "this one". An original long vowel lost to coalescence is sometimes marked with a double ''avagraha:'' ' ( ← ' + ') "always, the self". In Hindi, states that its "main function is to show that a vowel is sustained in a cry or a shout": '. In Madhyadeshi Languages like Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Maithili, etc. which have "quite a number of verbal forms [that] end in that inherent vowel", the ''avagraha'' is used to mark the ''non-''elision of word-final inherent ''a'', which otherwise is a modern Orthography, orthographic convention: ' "sit" versus ' # The syllabic consonants ' (), '','' () and ' () are specific to Sanskrit and not included in the ' of other languages. The sound represented by ' has also been lost in the modern languages, and its pronunciation now ranges from (Hindi) to (Marathi). # ' is not an actual phoneme of Sanskrit, but rather a graphic convention included among the vowels in order to maintain the symmetry of short–long pairs of letters. # There are non-regular formations of ''ru'', ''rū'', and ''hṛ''. # There are two more vowels in
Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...
, and , that respectively represent [], similar to the received pronunciation, RP English pronunciation of in ‘act’, and [], similar to the RP pronunciation of in ‘cot’. These vowels are sometimes used in
Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
too, as in ''dôlar'', "dollar". IAST transliteration is not defined. In ISO 15919, the transliteration is ê and ô, respectively.


Consonants

The table below shows the consonant letters (in combination with inherent vowel ''a'') and their arrangement. To the right of the Devanagari letter it shows the Latin script transliteration using International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, and the phonetic value (International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA) in
Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
. * Additionally, there is ' (International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA: or ), the intervocalic retroflex lateral flap, lateral flap allophone of the voiced retroflex stop in Vedic Sanskrit, which is a phoneme in languages such as
Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...
, Konkani, Garhwali language, Garhwali, and Rajasthani language, Rajasthani. * Beyond the Sanskritic set, new shapes have rarely been formulated. offers the following, "In any case, according to some, all possible sounds had already been described and provided for in this system, as Sanskrit was the original and perfect language. Hence it was difficult to provide for or even to conceive ''other'' sounds, unknown to the phoneticians of Sanskrit". Where foreign borrowings and internal developments did inevitably accrue and arise in New Indo-Aryan languages, they have been ignored in writing, or dealt through means such as diacritics and Typographic ligature, ligatures (ignored in recitation). ** The most prolific diacritic has been the subscript dot (''Nukta, nuqtā'') .
Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
uses it for the Persian language, Persian, Arabic language, Arabic and English sounds ''qa'' Voiceless uvular plosive, /q/, ''xa'' Voiceless velar fricative, /x/, ''ġa'' Voiced velar fricative, /ɣ/, ''za'' Voiced alveolar fricative, /z/, ''zha'' Voiced postalveolar fricative, /ʒ/, and ''fa'' Voiceless labiodental fricative, /f/, and for the allophonic developments ' Retroflex flap, /ɽ/ and ' /ɽʱ/. (Although ' could also exist, it is not used in Hindi.) ** Sindhi's and Saraiki language, Saraiki's implosives are accommodated with a line attached below: , , , . ** Aspiration (phonetics), Aspirated sonorants may be represented as conjuncts/Typographic ligature, ligatures with ''ha'': ''mha'', ''nha'', ', ''vha'', ''lha'', ', ''rha''. ** notes Marwari language, Marwari as using for ' (while represents ). For a list of the 297 (33×9) possible Sanskrit consonant-(short) vowel syllables see Āryabhaṭa numeration.


Vowel diacritics

Table: Consonants with vowel diacritics. Vowels in their independent form on the top and in their corresponding dependent form (vowel sign) combined with the consonant '' on the bottom. '' is without any added vowel sign, where the vowel '' is Inherent vowel, inherent. A vowel combines with a consonant in their diacritic form. For example, the vowel () combines with the consonant () to form the syllabic letter (), with Virama, halant (cancel sign) removed and added vowel sign which is indicated by diacritics. The vowel () combines with the consonant () to form () with halant removed. But the diacritic series of ... () is without any added vowel sign, as the vowel अ (a) is Inherent vowel, inherent. The transliteration of each combination will appear on mouseover.


Conjunct consonants

As mentioned, successive consonants lacking a vowel in between them may physically join together as a ''conjunct consonant'' or Ligature (typography), ligature. When Devanagari is used for writing languages other than Sanskrit, conjuncts are used mostly with Sanskrit words and loan words. Native words typically use the basic consonant and native speakers know to suppress the vowel when it is conventional to do so. For example, the native Hindi word ''karnā'' is written (''ka-ra-nā''). The government of these clusters ranges from widely to narrowly applicable rules, with special exceptions within. While standardised for the most part, there are certain variations in clustering, of which the Unicode used on this page is just one scheme. The following are a number of rules: * 24 out of the 36 consonants contain a vertical right stroke ( ''kha'', ''gha'', ''ṇa'' etc.). As first or middle fragments/members of a cluster (when letters are to be written as half pronounced), they lose that stroke. e.g. + = ''tva'', + = ''ṇḍha'', + = ''stha''. In Unicode, as in Hindi, these consonants without their vertical stems are called half forms. ''ś(a)'' appears as a different, simple ribbon-shaped fragment preceding ''va'', ''na'', ''ca'', ''la'', and ''ra'', causing these second members to be shifted down and reduced in size. Thus ''śva'', ''śna'', ''śca'' ''śla'', ''śra, and'' ''śri.'' * ''r(a)'' as a first member takes the form of a curved upward dash above the final character or its ''ā-''diacritic. e.g. ''rva'', ''rvā'', ''rspa'', ''rspā''. As a final member with ''ṭa'', ''ṭha'', ''ḍa'', ''ḍha'', ''ṛa'', ''cha'', it is two lines together below the character pointed downwards. Thus ''ṭra'', ''ṭhra'', ''ḍra'', ''ḍhra'', ''ṛra'', ''chra''. Elsewhere as a final member it is a diagonal stroke extending leftwards and down. e.g. . ''ta'' is shifted up to make the conjunct ''tra''. * As first members, remaining characters lacking vertical strokes such as ''d(a)'' and ''h(a)'' may have their second member, reduced in size and lacking its horizontal stroke, placed underneath. ''k(a)'', ''ch(a)'', and ''ph(a)'' shorten their right hooks and join them directly to the following member. * The conjuncts for ' and ' are not clearly derived from the letters making up their components. The conjunct for ' is ( + ) and for ' it is ( + ).


Accent marks

The pitch accent of Vedic Sanskrit is written with various symbols depending on shakha. In the Rigveda, ''anudātta'' is written with a bar below the line (), ''svarita'' with a stroke above the line () while ''udātta'' is unmarked.


Punctuation

The end of a sentence or half-verse may be marked with the "" symbol (called a ''Danda, daṇḍa'', meaning "bar", or called a ', meaning "full stop/pause"). The end of a full verse may be marked with a double-''daṇḍa'', a "" symbol. A comma (called an ', meaning "short stop/pause") is used to denote a natural pause in speech.Transliteration from Hindi Script to Meetei Mayek
Watham and Vimal (2013), IJETR, page 550
Punctuation marks of Western world, Western origin, such as the colon (punctuation), colon, semicolon, exclamation mark, dash, and question mark have been in use in Devanagari script since at least the 1900s, matching their use in European languages.


Old forms

The following letter variants are also in use, particularly in older texts.


Numerals


Fonts

A variety of Unicode fonts are in use for Devanagari. These include Akshar, Annapurna, Arial, CDAC-Gist Surekh,CDAC-GIST Surekh Unicode
South Asia Language Resource, University of Chicago (2009)
CDAC-Gist Yogesh, Chandas,Sanskrit Devanagari Fonts
Harvard University (2010); se
Chanda and Uttara ttf
2010 archive (Accessed: July 8, 2015)
Gargi, Gurumaa, Jaipur, Jana, Kalimati, Kanjirowa, Lohit Devanagari, Mangal, Kokila, Raghu, Sanskrit2003, Santipur OT,Sanskrit Devanagari Fonts
Harvard University (2010); se
Chanda and Uttara ttf
2010 archive (Accessed: July 8, 2015)
Siddhanta, and Thyaka. The form of Devanagari fonts vary with function. According to Harvard College for Sanskrit studies: The Google Fonts project has a number of Unicode fonts for Devanagari in a variety of typefaces in serif, sans-serif, display and handwriting categories.


Transliteration

There are several methods of Romanisation or transliteration from Devanagari to the Latin alphabet, Roman script.


Hunterian system

The Hunterian transliteration, Hunterian system is the "''national system of romanisation in
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
''" and the one officially adopted by the Government of India.


ISO 15919

A standard transliteration convention was codified in the ISO 15919 standard of 2001. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic graphemes to the Latin script. The Devanagari-specific portion is nearly identical to the academic standard for Sanskrit, IAST.


IAST

The IAST, International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is the academic standard for the romanisation of Sanskrit. IAST is the de facto standard used in printed publications, like books, magazines, and electronic texts with Unicode fonts. It is based on a standard established by the ''Congress of Orientalists'' at Athens in 1912. The ISO 15919 standard of 2001 codified the transliteration convention to include an expanded standard for sister scripts of Devanagari.Devanagari IAST conventions
Script Source (2009), SIL International, United States
The National Library at Kolkata romanisation, intended for the romanisation of all Indic scripts, is an extension of IAST.


Harvard-Kyoto

Compared to IAST, Harvard-Kyoto looks much simpler. It does not contain all the diacritic marks that IAST contains. It was designed to simplify the task of putting large amount of Sanskrit textual material into machine readable form, and the inventors stated that it reduces the effort needed in transliteration of Sanskrit texts on the keyboard. This makes typing in Harvard-Kyoto much easier than IAST. Harvard-Kyoto uses capital letters that can be difficult to read in the middle of words.


ITRANS

ITRANS is a lossless transliteration scheme of Devanagari into ASCII that is widely used on Usenet. It is an extension of the Harvard-Kyoto scheme. In ITRANS, the word ''devanāgarī'' is written "devanaagarii" or "devanAgarI". ITRANS is associated with an application of the same name that enables typesetting in Brahmic family, Indic scripts. The user inputs in Roman letters and the ITRANS pre-processor translates the Roman letters into Devanagari (or other Indic languages). The latest version of ITRANS is version 5.30 released in July 2001. It is similar to Velthuis system and was created by Avinash Chopde to help print various Indic scripts with personal computers.Transliteration of Devanāgarī
D. Wujastyk (1996)


Velthuis

The disadvantage of the above ASCII schemes is case-sensitivity, implying that transliterated names may not be capitalised. This difficulty is avoided with the system developed in 1996 by Frans Velthuis for TeX, loosely based on IAST, in which case is irrelevant.


ALA-LC Romanisation

ALA-LC romanisation is a transliteration scheme approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, and widely used in North American libraries. Transliteration tables are based on languages, so there is a table for Hindi, one for Sanskrit and Prakrit, etc.


WX

WX is a Roman transliteration scheme for Indian languages, widely used among the natural language processing community in India. It originated at IIT Kanpur for computational processing of Indian languages. The salient features of this transliteration scheme are as follows. * Every consonant and every vowel has a single mapping into Roman. Hence it is a prefix code, advantageous from computation point of view. * Lower-case letters are used for unaspirated consonants and short vowels, while capital letters are used for aspirated consonants and long vowels. While the retroflex stops are mapped to 't, T, d, D, N', the dentals are mapped to 'w, W, x, X, n'. Hence the name 'WX', a reminder of this idiosyncratic mapping.


Encodings


ISCII

ISCII is an 8-bit encoding. The lower 128 codepoints are plain ASCII, the upper 128 codepoints are ISCII-specific. It has been designed for representing not only Devanagari but also various other Indic scripts as well as a Latin-based script with diacritic marks used for transliteration of the Indic scripts. ISCII has largely been superseded by Unicode, which has, however, attempted to preserve the ISCII layout for its Indic language blocks.


Unicode

The Unicode Standard defines four blocks for Devanagari: Devanagari (U+0900–U+097F), Devanagari Extended (U+A8E0–U+A8FF), Devanagari Extended-A (U+11B00–11B5F), and Vedic Extensions (U+1CD0–U+1CFF).


Devanagari keyboard layouts


InScript layout

InScript is the standard Keyboard (computing), keyboard layout for Devanagari as standardized by the Government of India. It is inbuilt in all modern major operating systems. Microsoft Windows supports the InScript layout (using the Mangal font), which can be used to input unicode Devanagari characters. InScript is also available in some touchscreen mobile phones.


Typewriter

This layout was used on manual typewriters when computers were not available or were uncommon. For backward compatibility some typing tools like Indic IME still provide this layout.


Phonetic

Such tools work on phonetic transliteration. The user writes in the Latin alphabet and the Input method editor, IME automatically converts it into Devanagari. Some popular phonetic typing tools are Akruti, Baraha IME and Google IME. The Mac OS X operating system includes two different keyboard layouts for Devanagari: one resembles the INSCRIPT/KDE Linux, while the other is a phonetic layout called "Devanagari QWERTY". Any one of the Unicode fonts input systems is fine for the Indic language Wikipedia and other wikiprojects, including Hindi, Bhojpuri, Marathi, and Nepali Wikipedia. While some people use InScript keyboard, InScript, the majority uses either Google transliteration, Google phonetic transliteration or the input facility :MW:Universal Language Selector, Universal Language Selector provided on Wikipedia. On Indic language wikiprojects, the phonetic facility provided initially was java-based, and was later supported by Narayam extension for phonetic input facility. Currently Indic language Wiki projects are supported by :MW:Universal Language Selector, Universal Language Selector (ULS), that offers both phonetic keyboard (Aksharantaran, Marathi: , Hindi: ) and InScript keyboard (Marathi: ). The Ubuntu Linux operating system supports several keyboard layouts for Devanagari, including Harvard-Kyoto, WX notation, Bolanagari and phonetic. The 'remington' typing method in Ubuntu IBUS is similar to the Krutidev typing method, popular in Rajasthan. The 'itrans' method is useful for those who know English (and the English keyboard) well but are not familiar with typing in Devanagari.


See also

* Languages of India * Clip font * Devanagari transliteration * Devanagari Braille * ISCII * Nagari Pracharini Sabha * Nepali * Schwa deletion in Indo-Aryan languages * Shiksha – the Vedas, Vedic study of sound, focusing on the letters of the
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
alphabet


References


Citations


General sources

* . * . * . * . * . * .


Census and catalogues of manuscripts in Devanagari

Thousands of manuscripts of ancient and medieval era Sanskrit texts in Devanagari have been discovered since the 19th century. Major catalogues and census include: * , Medical Hall Press, Princeton University Archive * , Vol 1: Upanishads, Friedrich Otto Schrader (Compiler), University of Michigan Library Archives
A preliminary list of the Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts
Vedas, Sastras, Sutras, Schools of Hindu Philosophies, Arts, Design, Music and other fields, Friedrich Otto Schrader (Compiler), (Devanagiri manuscripts are identified by Character code De.)
Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts
Part 1: Vedic Manuscripts, Harvard University Archives (mostly Devanagari)
Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts
Part 4: Manuscripts of Hindu schools of Philosophy and Tantra, Harvard University Archives (mostly Devanagari)
Catalogue of the Sanskrit Manuscripts
Part 5: Manuscripts of Medicine, Astronomy and Mathematics, Architecture and Technical Science Literature, Julius Eggeling (Compiler), Harvard University Archives (mostly Devanagari) * , Part 6: Poetic, Epic and Purana Literature, Harvard University Archives (mostly Devanagari) * David Pingree (1970–1981), Census of the Exact Sciences in Sanskrit: Volumes 1 through 5
American Philosophical Society
Manuscripts in various Indic scripts including Devanagari


External links


Devnagari Unicode Legacy Font Converters

Digital Nagari fonts
University of Chicago

Wazu, Japan (Alternate collection

, McGill University) * , Rudradaman's inscription in Sanskrit Nagari script from 1st through 4th century CE (coins and epigraphy), found in Gujarat, India, pages 30–45
Numerals and Text in Devanagari
, 9th century temple in Gwalior Madhya Pradesh, India, Current Science * {{Authority control Devanagari, Articles containing video clips Brahmic scripts Hindi Hindustani orthography Officially used writing systems of India