The Rejang alphabet, is an
abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
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 ...
, and is related to other scripts of the region, like
Batak
Batak is a collective term used to identify a number of closely related Austronesian ethnic groups predominantly found in North Sumatra, Indonesia, who speak Batak languages. The term is used to include the Karo, Pakpak, Simalungun, Toba, ...
,
Lontara
Lontara or lontaraq () are Bugis-Makassar palm-leaf manuscripts that record knowledge on such topics as history, science, custom, and laws. The term originates from the Javanese/ Malay word ''lontar'', which is the name of the palm tree ''Bora ...
, and others. Rejang is a member of the closely related group of
Surat Ulu
Surat is a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The word Surat literally means ''face'' in Gujarati and Hindi. Located on the banks of the river Tapti near its confluence with the Arabian Sea, it used to be a large seaport. It is no ...
scripts that include the script variants of South Sumatra, Bengkulu, Lembak, Lintang, Lebong, and Serawai. Other scripts that are closely related, and sometimes included in the Surat Ulu group, are
South Sumatra
South Sumatra ( id, Sumatra Selatan) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southeast of the island of Sumatra, The province spans and had a population of 8,467,432 at the 2020 Census. The capital of the province is Palembang. The pro ...
,
Kerinci and
Lampung
Lampung ( Lampung: ), officially the Province of Lampung ( id, Provinsi Lampung) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southern tip of the island of Sumatra. It has a short border with the province of Bengkulu to the northwest, an ...
. The script was in use prior to the introduction of Islam to the Rejang area; the earliest attested document appears to date from the mid-18th century CE. The Rejang script is sometimes also known as the KaGaNga script following the first three letters of the alphabet. The term KaGaNga was never used by the users of the script community, but it was coined by the British anthropologist Mervyn A. Jaspan (1926–1975) in his book ''Folk literature of South Sumatra. Redjang Ka-Ga-Nga texts.'' Canberra, The Australian National University 1964.
The script was used to write texts in Malay and
Rejang, which is now spoken by about 200,000 people living in
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 ...
on the island of
Sumatra in the southwest highlands, north
Bengkulu
Bengkulu is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southwest coast of Sumatra. It was formed on 18 November 1968 by separating out the former Bencoolen Residency area from the province of South Sumatra under Law No. 9 of 1967 and was ...
Province, around
Arga Makmur
Arga Makmur is a town, district and the seat of North Bengkulu Regency
North Bengkulu is a regency ( id, kabupaten) of Bengkulu Province, Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceani ...
,
Muaraaman,
Curup
Curup is a town and district of Rejang Lebong Regency, part of Bengkulu Province of Indonesia. It is also the administrative capital of the regency. Curup is the second-largest town in the province of Bengkulu. Curup District has an area of 6.2 ...
, and
Kepahiang, and also in the Rawas area of
South Sumatra
South Sumatra ( id, Sumatra Selatan) is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the southeast of the island of Sumatra, The province spans and had a population of 8,467,432 at the 2020 Census. The capital of the province is Palembang. The pro ...
Province, near
Muara Kulam. There are five major dialects of Rejang: Lebong, Musi, Kebanagung, Pesisir (all in Bengkulu Province), and Rawas (in South Sumatra Province). Most of its users live in fairly remote rural areas, of whom slightly less than half are literate.
The traditional Rejang corpus consists chiefly of ritual texts, medical incantations, and poetry.
Letters
Letters of the script can be found in the inscription below:
[Everson, Michael. (2006)]
''Proposal for encoding the Rejang script in the BMP of the UCS''.
/ref>
Letters with IPA
The script's diacritics are attached here to the base letter ''a'' () to disambiguate similar ones if the base letter isn't used, like in the case with , , , and . Exception for the virama
Virama ( ्) is a Sanskrit phonological concept to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either
# halanta, hasanta or explicit virā ...
, in which its base letter is ''ka'' ().
See also
* Rencong script
The Rencong script, locally known as ''Surat Ulu'' ('upstream script') is a writing system family found in central and south Sumatra, in the regions of Kerinci, Bengkulu, Palembang and Lampung, Indonesia. It was used to write manuscripts in Su ...
References
External links
* https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21116-surat-ulu.pdf
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rejang Script
Brahmic scripts
Indonesian scripts