Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. Also simply called Nāgarī (), it is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ancient Brāhmī script. It is one of the official scripts of India and Nepal. It was developed and in regular use by the 8th century CE. It had achieved its modern form by 1000 CE. The Devanāgarī script, composed of 48 primary characters, including 14 vowels and 34 consonants, is the fourth most widely adopted writing system in the world, being used for over 120 languages, the most popular of which is Hindi. It has long been used traditionally by religiously educated people in South Asia to record and transmit information, existing throughout the land in parallel with a wide variety of local scripts (such as Moḍī, Kaithi, and Mahajani) used for administration, commerce, and other daily uses.

The orthography of this script reflects the pronunciation of the language. Unlike the Latin alphabet, the script has no concept of letter case, meaning the script is a unicameral alphabet. 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 , that runs along the top of full letters. In a cursory look, the Devanāgarī script appears different from other Indic scripts, such as Bengali-Assamese or Gurmukhi, but a closer examination reveals they are very similar, except for angles and structural emphasis.

Among the languages using it as a primary or secondary script are Marathi, Pāḷi, Sanskrit, Hindi, Boro, Nepali, Sherpa, Prakrit, Apabhramsha, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha, Chhattisgarhi, Haryanvi, Magahi, Nagpuri, Rajasthani, Khandeshi, Bhili, Dogri, Kashmiri, Shina, Maithili, Konkani, Sindhi, Saraiki, Nepal Bhasa, Mundari, Angika, Bajjika and Santali. The Devanāgarī script is closely related to the Nandināgarī script commonly found in numerous ancient manuscripts of South India, and it is distantly related to a number of Southeast Asian scripts.

Etymology is formed by combining the word () with (). is an adjective derived from (), a Sanskrit word meaning "town" or "city", and literally means "urban" or "urbane".

The word (implicitly modifying (), meaning "script") was used independently to refer to a North Indian script, or possibly a group of such scripts, as attested by Al-Biruni in the 11th century. The form is attested later, at least by the 18th century.

The name of the Nandināgarī script is also formed by adding a prefix to the generic script name . The precise origin and significance of the prefix - ("heavenly" or "god") remains unclear.

History

is part of the Brahmic family of scripts of India, Nepal, Tibet, and Southeast Asia. It is a descendant of the 3rd century BCE Brāhmī script, which evolved into the Nagari script which in turn gave birth to Devanāgarī and Nandināgarī.

Medieval inscriptions suggest widespread diffusion of Nāgarī-related scripts, with biscripts presenting local script along with the adoption of scripts. For example, the mid-8th-century Pattadakal pillar in Karnataka has text in both Siddha Matrika script, and an early Telugu-Kannada script; while the Kangra Jawalamukhi inscription in Himachal Pradesh is written in both Sharada and Devanāgarī scripts.

The 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 script in medieval India is attested by numerous pillar and cave-temple inscriptions, including the 11th-century Udayagiri inscriptions in Madhya Pradesh, and an inscribed brick found in Uttar Pradesh, dated to be from 1217 CE, which is now held at the British Museum. Nāgarī has been the of the Indic scripts. In northern and central India, Nāgarī became increasingly associated with Sanskrit and eventually with a number of regional languages. The form subsequently known as Devanāgarī became the principal standardized form of the Nagari tradition. Salomon places the development of standardized Devanāgarī around the end of the first millennium, while noting that regional and chronological variation continued.

One of the oldest surviving Sanskrit texts from the early post-Maurya period consists of 1,413 pages of a commentary by Patanjali, with a composition date of about 150 BCE, the surviving copy transcribed about 14th century CE.;Original manuscript, dates in Saka Samvat, and uncertainties associated with it: In Sinja Valley, mid-western Nepal where the Nepali language originates from, the earliest examples of the Devanagari script from the 13th century were found on the cliffs and in nearby Dullu.

has been widely adopted across India and Nepal to write Sanskrit, Marathi, Hindi, Central Indo-Aryan languages, Konkani, Boro, and various Nepalese languages.

Letters

The letter order of Devanāgarī, like nearly all Brāhmic scripts, is based on phonetic principles that consider both the 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 Devanāgarī for Sanskrit serves as the prototype for its application, with minor variations or additions, to other languages.

The vowels and their arrangement are:

Independent form IAST ISO IPA As diacritic with (Barakhadi) Independent form IAST ISO IPA As diacritic with (Barakhadi)(Velar) (Palatal) (Labial)  8  8(Retroflex) 5, 8  6 (Dental) 6  6, 7 (Palatovelar) (in Hindi: )(Labiovelar) (in Hindi: ) /  1,2  /  1

Arranged with the vowels are two consonantal diacritics, the final nasal and the final fricative (called and ). notes of the in Sanskrit that "there is some controversy as to whether it represents a homorganic nasal stop , a nasalised vowel, a nasalised semivowel, or all these according to context". The 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 along with letters and for the "largely predictable" velar and palatal nasals to be examples of "phonetic overkill in the system". Another diacritic is the / . 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 vowel nasalisation while the indicates a homorganic nasal preceding another consonant: e.g., "laughter", "the Ganges". When an has a vowel diacritic above the top line, that leaves no room for the ("moon") stroke , 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 virāma or halanta diacritic ् expresses the absence of a vowel after the consonant, e.g. क्‌ष can represent kṣa. The ( ) (usually 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 : ( ← + ) "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 is used to mark the non-elision of word-final inherent , which otherwise is a modern orthographic convention: "sit" versus The sound represented by has largely been lost in the modern languages, and its pronunciation now ranges from (Hindi) to (Marathi). The syllabic consonants , , and are specific to Sanskrit and not included in the of other languages. 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 , , and . There are two more vowels in Marathi, and , that respectively represent [], similar to the RP English pronunciation of in act, and [], similar to the RP pronunciation of in cot. These vowels are sometimes used in Hindi too, as in ("dollar"). IAST transliteration is not defined. In ISO 15919, the transliteration is and , respectively. Kashmiri Devanagari uses letters like , , , , , , , to represent its vowels (see Kashmiri language#Devanagari).

Consonants The table below shows the consonant letters (in combination with inherent vowel ) and their arrangement. To the right of the Devanāgarī letter it shows the Latin script transliteration using International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, and the phonetic value (IPA) in Hindi.

Phonetics → (Occlusive) (Nasal) (Approximant) /(Fricative) Voicing → Aspiration → (Velar)(Palatal)(Retroflex)(Dental)(Labial)

Additionally, there is (IPA: or ), the intervocalic lateral flap allophone of the voiced retroflex stop in Vedic Sanskrit, which is a phoneme in languages such as Marathi, Konkani, Garhwali, and 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 (The phoneticians did describe certain sounds qua sounds — bilabial fricatives, for instance — which, being either sporadic or completely predictable, were never represented in the writing system.)". Where foreign borrowings and internal developments did inevitably accrue and arise in New Indo-Aryan languages, they have been ignored in writing or dealt with through means such as diacritics and ligatures (ignored in recitation). The most prolific diacritic has been the subscript dot () . Hindi uses it for the Persian, Arabic and English sounds /q/, /x/, /ɣ/, /z/, /ʒ/, and /f/, and for the allophonic developments /ɽ/ and . (Although could also exist, it is not used in Hindi.) Devanagari used to write Mahl dialect of Dhivehi uses nukta on , , , , , , to represent other Perso-Arabic phonemes (see Maldivian writing systems#Devanagari script for Mahl). Sindhi's and Saraiki's implosives are accommodated with a line attached below: , , , . Aspirated sonorants may be represented as conjuncts/ligatures with : , , , , , , . notes Marwari as using for (while represents ). When used to write Avestan, Devanagari uses letters like /ʒ/ to represent its sounds.

Vowel diacritics

The table below shows the syllabic letter () modified by common dependent vowel marks and diacritics, with the ISO 15919 transliterations for each combination. Vowels in their independent form (without a consonant) are on the top, and in their corresponding dependent form (vowel diacritic) combined with the consonant '' on the bottom. The table begins with '' without any added vowel mark, where the vowel '' is inherent.

a ā i ī u ū r̥ r̥̄ l̥ l̥̄ e ê ē ai o ô ō au ṃ m̐ ḥ अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ॠ ऌ ॡ ऄ ॲ ए ऐ ऒ ऑ ओ औ अं अँ अः ा ि ी ु ू ृ ॄ ॢ ॣ ॆ ॅ े ै ॊ ॉ ो ौ ं ँ ः ् ़ kakākikīkukūkr̥kr̥̄kl̥kl̥̄kekêkēkaikokôkōkaukaṃkam̐kaḥkqaक का कि की कु कू कृ कॄ कॢ कॣ कॆ कॅ के कै कॊ कॉ को कौ कं कँ कः क् क़

A vowel combines with a consonant in their diacritic form. For example, the vowel () combines with the consonant () to form the syllabic letter (), with (cancel sign) removed and added vowel sign which is indicated by diacritics. The vowel () combines with the consonant () to form () with removed. But the diacritic series of , , , (, respectively) is without any added vowel sign, as the vowel () is inherent.

Barakhadi