Origins

Devanāgarī is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of Nepal, India, Tibet, and South-East Asia. It is a descendant of the Gupta script, along with Siddham and Sharada. Eastern variants of Gupta called Nāgarī are first attested from the 8th century; from c. 1200 these gradually replaced Siddham, which survived as a vehicle for Tantric Buddhism in East Asia, and Sharada, which remained in parallel use in Kashmir.

Sanskrit nāgarī is the feminine of nāgara "urban(e)", a vrddhi adjectival form of nagaram, called establishment. It is feminine from its original phrasing with lipi ("script") as nāgarī lipi "urban(e) script", that is, the script of the cultured establishment. There are several varieties of Nāgarī in use, one of which was distinguished by affixing Deva "god" or "deity" to form a tatpurusha compound meaning the "urban(e) [script] of the gods", or "divine urban(e) [script]".

The use of the name Devanāgarī is relatively recent, and the older term Nāgarī is still common. The rapid spread of the term Devanāgarī may be related to the almost exclusive use of this script to publish sacred Sanskrit texts in colonial times. This has led to such a close connection between Devanāgarī and Sanskrit that Devanāgarī is now widely thought to be the Sanskrit script; however, before the colonial period there was no standard script for Sanskrit, which was written in whichever script was familiar to the local populace.


As a Brahmic abugida, the fundamental principle of Devanāgarī is that each letter represents a consonant, which carries an inherent vowel a [ə].[1] For example, the letter क is read ka, the two letters कन are kana, the three कनय are kanaya, etc. Other vowels, or the absence of vowels, require modification of these consonants or their own letters:

* Consonant clusters are written with ligatures (saṃyuktākṣara "conjuncts"). For example, the three letters कनय kanaya may be joined to form क्नय knaya, कन्य kanya, or क्न्य knya.
* Vowels other than the inherent a are written with diacritics (termed matras). For example, using क ka, the following forms can be derived: के ke, कु ku, की kī, का kā, etc.
* For vowels as an independent syllable (in writing, unattached to a consonant), either at the beginning of a word or after another vowel, there are full-letter forms. For example, while the vowel ū is written with the diacritic ू in कू kū, it has its own letter ऊ in ऊक ūka and कऊ kaū.
* A final consonant is marked with the diacritic ्, called the virāma in Sanskrit, halanta in Hindi, and a "killer stroke"[citation needed] in English. This cancels the inherent vowel, so that from क्नय knaya is derived क्नय् knay. The halanta will often be used for consonant clusters when typesetting ligatures is not feasible.[citation needed]

Such a letter or ligature, with its diacritics, is called an akṣara "syllable". For example, कनय kanaya is written with what are counted as three akshara, whereas क्न्य knya and कु ku are each written with one.

As far as handwriting is concerned, letters are usually written without the distinctive horizontal bar, which is only added once the word is finished being written.[2][citation needed]