Brahmic family of scripts

The Brahmic scripts are a family of abugida or alphabet writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia, and were once used in Japan, and are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India. They are used by languages of several language families: Indo-European, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, and Tai. They were also the source of the dictionary order of Japanese kana.

Brahmic scripts descended from the Brahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 3rd century BC during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script for imperial edicts, but there are some claims of earlier epigraphy found on pottery in South India and Sri Lanka. The most reliable of these were short Brahmi inscriptions dated to the 4th century BC and published by Coningham et al., but scattered press reports have claimed both dates as early as the 6th century BC and that the characters are identifiably Tamil Brahmi, though these latter claims do not appear to have been published academically. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the Middle Ages, including Siddham, Sharada and Nagari.

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