Brahmi was at one time referred to in English as the "pin-man" script, that is " stick figure" script.
The origin of the script is still much debated, with most scholars stating that Brahmi was derived from or at least influenced by one or more contemporary Semitic scripts, while others favor the idea of an indigenous origin or connection to the much older and as yet undeciphered Indus script of the Indus Valley Civilization. Wilson and Alexander Cunningham, among others. His breakthroughs built on the epigraphic work of Christian Lassen, Edwin Norris, H.
Bengali alphabet for kids series#
Brahmi was deciphered by James Prinsep, the secretary of the Society, in a series of scholarly articles in the Society's journal in the 1830s. The decipherment of Brahmi became the focus of European scholarly attention in the early 19th-century during East India Company rule in India, in particular in the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. The earliest (indisputably dated) and best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dating to 250–232 BCE. Sometime thereafter, the capability to read the original Brahmi script was lost.
The writing system only went through relatively minor evolutionary changes from the Mauryan period (3rd century BCE) down to the early Gupta period (4th century CE), and it is thought that as late as the 4th century CE, a literate person could still read and understand Mauryan inscriptions. īrahmi is an abugida which uses a system of diacritical marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. Its descendants, the Brahmic scripts, continue to be in use today not only in South Asia, but also Southeast Asia. The Brahmi writing system, or script, appeared as a fully developed universal one in South Asia in the third century BCE, and is a forerunner of all writing systems that have found use in South Asia with the exception of the Indus script of the third millennium BCE, the Kharosthi script, which originated in what today is northwestern Pakistan in the fourth or possibly fifth century BCE, the Perso–Arabic scripts since the medieval period, and the Latin scripts of the modern period. You may need rendering support to display the uncommon Unicode characters in this article correctly.īrahmi ( / ˈ b r ɑː m i/ ???????? ISO: Brāhmī) is a writing system of ancient South Asia. For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The theorised Semitic origins of the Brahmi script are not universally agreed upon.