Devanagari

Devanagari देवनागरी
Devanagari script (vowels top, consonants bottom) in Chandas font.
Type	Abugida
Languages	Hindi, Kashmiri, Marathi, Maithili, Nepali, Konkani, Bodo, Sindhi and Sanskrit.
Time period	Early signs: 1st century CE, modern form: 10th century CE
Parent systems	Brāhmī Gupta Nāgarī Devanagari
Child systems	Gujarati Moḍī
Sister systems	Gurmukhi, Nandinagari
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Deva, 315
Unicode alias	Devanagari
Unicode range	U+0900–U+097F Devanagari, U+A8E0–U+A8FF Devanagari Extended, U+1CD0–U+1CFF Vedic Extensions

Devanagari (DAY-və-NAH-gər-ee; देवनागरी, IAST: Devanāgarī, a compound of "deva" देव and "nāgarī" नागरी; Hindi pronunciation: [d̪eːʋˈnaːɡri]; ), also called Nagari (Nāgarī, नागरी), is an abugida (alphasyllabary) alphabet of India and Nepal. 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 that runs along the top of full letters. In a cursory look, the Devanagari script appears different from other Indic scripts such as Bengali, Oriya, or Gurmukhi, but a closer examination reveals they are very similar except for angles and structural emphasis.

The Nagari script has roots in the ancient Brāhmī script family. Some of the earliest epigraphical evidence attesting to the developing Sanskrit Nagari script in ancient India, in a form similar to Devanagari, is from the 1st to 4th century CE inscriptions discovered in Gujarat. The Nagari 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 Nagari script in medieval India is attested by numerous pillar and cave temple inscriptions, including the 11th-century Udayagiri inscriptions in Madhya Pradesh, a brick with inscriptions found in Uttar Pradesh, dated to be from 1217 CE, which is now held at the British Museum. The script's proto- and related versions have been discovered in ancient relics outside of India, such as in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Indonesia; while in East Asia, Siddha Matrika script considered as the closest precursor to Nagari was in use by Buddhists. Nagari has been the primus inter pares of the Indic scripts.