Devanagari

Devanāgarī

Rigveda manuscript in Devanāgarī (early 19th century)
Type abugida
Spoken languages Several Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Pahari (Garhwali and Kumaoni), Nepali, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Kurukh, Nepal Bhasa, Sindhi and Kashmiri. Sometimes used to write or transliterate Sherpa. Formerly used to write Gujarati.
Time period c. 1200–present
Parent systems
Child systems Gujarati
Moḍī
Ranjana
Canadian Aboriginal syllabics
Sister systems Sharada, Eastern Nāgarī
Unicode range U+0900–U+097F and U+A8E0–U+A8FF
ISO 15924 Deva
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

Brāhmī

The Brahmic script and its descendants





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Devanagari (pronounced /ˌdeɪvəˈnɑːɡəˌriː/; Hindustani pronunciation: [ˌdeːvˈnɑːɡriː]; देवनागरी Devanāgarī), also called Nagari (Nāgarī, the name of its parent writing system), is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written from left to right, does not have distinct letter cases, and is recognizable by a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the letters that links them together. Devanāgarī is the main script used to write Standard Hindi, Marathi, and Nepali. Since the 19th century, it has been the most commonly used script for Sanskrit. Devanāgarī is also employed for Bhojpuri, Gujari, Pahari (Garhwali and Kumaoni), Konkani, Magahi, Maithili, Marwari, Bhili, Newari, Santhali, Tharu, and sometimes Sindhi, Sherpa and Kashmiri. It was formerly used to write Gujarati.

Origins

Devanāgarī is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of India, Nepal, 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. 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.

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. 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.

Principles

As a Brahmic abugida, the fundamental principle of Devanāgarī is that each letter represents a consonant, which carries an inherent schwa vowel a [ə]. 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, halant in Hindi, and occasionally a "killer stroke" in English. This cancels the inherent vowel, so that from क्नय knaya is derived क्नय् knay. The halant is often used for consonant clusters when typesetting conjunct ligatures is not feasible.

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 completed.

Letters

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

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

Vowels

The vowels and their arrangement are:

Independent form Romanized As diacritic with प Independent form Romanized As diacritic with प
kaṇṭhya
(Guttural) अ a प आ ā पा
tālavya
(Palatal) इ i पि ई ī पी
oṣṭhya
(Labial) उ u पु ऊ ū पू
mūrḍhanya
(Retroflex) ऋ ṛ पृ ॠ ṝ पॄ
dantya
(Dental) ऌ ḷ पॢ ॡ ḹ पॣ
kaṇṭhatālavya
(Palato-Guttural) ए e पे ऐ ai पै
kaṇṭhoṣṭhya
(Labio-Guttural) ओ o पो औ au पौ

• Arranged with the vowels are two consonantal diacritics, the final nasal anusvāra ं ṃ and the final fricative visarga ः ḥ (called अं aṃ and अः aḥ). Masica (1991:146) notes of the anusvāra in Sankrit that "there is some controversy as to whether it represents a homorganic nasal consonant [...], a nasalized vowel, a nasalized semivowel, or all these according to context". The visarga represents post-vocalic voiceless glottal fricative [h], in Sanskrit an allophone of s, or less commonly r, usually in word-final position. Some traditions of recitation append an echo of the vowel after the breath: इः [ihi]. Masica (1991:146) considers the visarga along with letters ङ ṅa and ञ ña for the "largely predictable" velar and palatal nasals to be examples of "phonetic overkill in the system".
• Another diacritic is the candrabindu/anunāsika ँ. Salomon (2003:76-77) describes it as a "more emphatic form" of the anusvāra, "sometimes [...] used to mark a true [vowel] nasalization". In a New Indo-Aryan language such as Hindi the distinction is formal: the candrabindu indicates vowel nasalization while the anusvār indicates a homorganic nasal preceding another consonant: e.g. हँसी [ɦə̃si] "laughter", गंगा [ɡəŋɡɑ] "Ganges". When an akshara 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: हूँ [ɦũ] "am", but हैं [ɦɛ̃] "are". Some writers and typesetters dispense with the "moon" stroke altogether, using only the dot in all situations.
• The avagraha ऽ (usually transliterated with an apostrophe) is a Sanskrit punctuation mark for the elision of a vowel in sandhi: एकोऽयम् ekoyam (< ekas + ayam) "this one". An original long vowel lost to coalescence is sometimes marked with a double avagraha: सदाऽऽत्मा sadātmā (< sadā + ātmā) "always, the self". In Hindi, Snell (2000:77) states that its "main function is to show that a vowel is sustained in a cry or a shout": आईऽऽऽ! āīīī!. In Magahi, which has "quite a number of verbal forms [that] end in that inherent vowel" Verma (2003:501), the avagraha is used to mark the non-elision of word-final inherent a, which otherwise is a modern orthographic convention: बइठऽ baiṭha "sit" versus *बइठ baiṭh
• The syllabic consonants ṝ, ḷ, and ḹ are specific to Sanskrit and not included in the varṇamālā of other languages. The sound represented by ṛ has also been lost in the modern languages, and its pronunciation now ranges from [ɾɪ] (Hindi) to [ɾu] (Marathi).
• ḹ 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 रु ru and रू rū.

Consonants

The consonants and their arrangement are: