Rabu, 13 Juli 2011

Aksara Brahmi 7 - 婆罗米文

Aksara Brahmi 7 - 婆罗米文


Brahmic (Indic) family of scripts; 婆罗米系文字; 印度系文字

Zdanie sanskryckie zapisane różnymi alfabetami indyjskimi

Indyjskie alfabety sylabiczne - rodzina systemów pisma, wywodzących się z brahmi (z wyjątkiem kharoszthi, które rozwijało się równolegle do brahmi i zaniknęło bez kontynuacji). W toku ewolucji brahmi wykształciły się dwie gałęzie alfabetów używanych w różnych epokach: gałąź północna, z której wywodzi się również pismo tybetańskie, oraz gałąź południowa z charakterystyczną okrągłą formą liter, która związana jest z użyciem liści palmowych do pisania. Proste linie lub ostre zmiany kierunku pisma groziły rozszczepieniem wzdłuż włókien liścia. Z gałęzi południowej wywodzą się również pisma używane w Azji Południowo-Wschodniej.


Die Formenvielfalt der indischen Schriften wird besonders deutlich, wenn man ein und denselben Satz (hier einen Sanskrit-Satz) in verschiedenen Schriften wiedergibt



Aksara Brahmi 6 - 婆罗米文

Aksara Brahmi 6 - 婆罗米文


Brahmic (Indic) family of scripts; 婆罗米系文字; 印度系文字






Brahmic (Indic) family of scripts; 婆罗米系文字; 印度系文字



A „Ka” írásjel fejlődése különböző bráhmi alapú írásokban.
The "Ka" Brahmi letters are based on the development of various regulations.

婆羅米系文字演化示例。


Selasa, 12 Juli 2011

Aksara Brahmi 5 - 婆罗米文

Aksara Brahmi 5 - 婆罗米文



Brāhmī Alphabet

The Brāhmī alphabet is the ancestor of most of the 40 or so modern Indian alphabets, and of a number of other alphabets, such as Khmer and Tibetan. It is thought to have been modelled on the Aramaic or Phoenician alphabets, and appeared in India sometime before 500 BC. Another theory is that Brāhmī developed from the Indus or Harappa script, which was used in the Indus valley until about 2,000 BC.
The earliest known inscriptions in the Brāhmī alphabet are those of King Asoka (c.270-232 BC), third monarch of the Mauryan dynasty.
Brāhmī was used to write a variety of languages, including Sanskrit and Prakrit.

Notable features

  • Type of writing system: abugida - each letter represents a consonant with an inherent vowel. Other vowels were indicated using a variety of diacritics and separate letters.
  • Letters are grouped according to the way they are pronounced.
  • Many letters have more than one form.
  • Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines

Consonants

The Brāhmī Script

Vowels and vowel diacritics

Brāhmī vowel diacritics

Sample text

Sample text in Brāhmī
Asokan Edict - Delhi Inscription

Transliteration

devānaṁpiye piyadasi lājā hevaṁ āhā ye atikaṁtaṁ
aṁtalaṁ lājāne husa hevaṁ ichisu kathaṁ jane
dhaṁmavaḍhiyā vāḍheya nocujane anulupāyā dhaṁmavaḍhiyā
vaḍhithā etaṁ devānaṁpiye piyadasi lājā hevaṁ āhā esame
huthā atākaṁtaṁ ca aṁtalaṁ hevaṁ ichisu lājāne katha jane

Translation

Thus spoke king Devanampiya Piyadasi:
"Kings of the olden time have gone to heaven under these very desires.
How then among mankind may religion (or growth in grace) be increased?
Yea, through the conversion of the humbly-born shall religion increase"

Some modern descendants of Brāhmī


Links


ALPHABETUM - a Unicode font specifically designed for ancient scripts, including classical & medieval Latin, ancient Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan, Messapic, Picene, Iberian, Celtiberian, Gothic, Runic, Old & Middle English, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Old Nordic, Ogham, Kharosthi, Glagolitic, Old Cyrillic, Phoenician, Avestan, Ugaritic, Linear B, Anatolian scripts, Coptic, Cypriot, Brahmi, Old Persian cuneiform: http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/~jmag0042/alphabet.html

Writing system used to write Sanskrit


Syllabic alphabets / abugidas


Aksara Brahmi 4 - 婆罗米文

Aksara Brahmi 4 - 婆罗米文


Brahmi


Quick Facts
Type Syllabic Alphabetic
Genealogy Brahmi
Location South Asia
Time 5th century BCE to 4th century CE
Direction Variable (Horizontal)

The Brahmi script is one of the most important writing systems in the world by virtue of its time depth and influence. It represents the earliest post-Indus corpus of texts, and some of the earliest historical inscriptions found in India. Most importantly, it is the ancestor to hundreds of scripts found in South, Southeast, and East Asia.
This elegant script appeared in India most certainly by the 5th century BCE, but the fact that it had many local variants even in the early texts suggests that its origin lies further back in time. There are several theories on to the origin of the Brahmi script. The first theory is that Brahmi has a West Semitic origin. For instance, the symbol for a resembles Semitic letter 'alif. Similarly, dha, tha, la, and ra all appear quite close to their Semitic counterparts. Another theory, from a slightly different school of thought, proposes a Southern Semitic origin. Finally, the third theory holds that the Brahmi script came from Indus Script. However, at least in my personal opinion, the lack of any textual evidence between the end of the Harappan period at around 1900 BC and the first Brahmi and Kharoshthi inscriptions at roughly 500 BC makes the Indus origin of Brahmi highly unlikely. Yet on the other hand, the way Brahmi, and its relative Kharosthi, works is quite different from Semitic scripts, and may point to either a stimulus-diffusion or even indigenous origin. The situation is complex and confusing, and more research should be conducted to either prove or disprove any of the theories.
Brahmi is a "syllabic alphabet", meaning that each sign can be either a simple consonant or a syllable with the consonant and the inherent vowel /a/. Other syllabic alphabets outside of South Asia include Old Persian and Meroïtic. However, unlike these two system, Brahmi (and all subsequent Brahmi-derived scripts) indicates the same consonant with a different vowel by drawing extra strokes, called matras, attached to the character. Ligatures are used to indicate consonant clusters.
The following chart is the basic Brahmi script. There are many variations to the basic letter form, but I have simplified it here so that the most canonical shape is presented.

And an example of strokes added to indicate different vowels following the consonants /k/ and /l/.


The Brahmi script was the ancestor of all South Asian Writing Systems. In addition, many East and Southeast Asian scripts, such as Burmese, Thai, Tibetan, and even Japanese to a very small extent (vowel order), were also ultimately derived from the Brahmi script. Thus the Brahmi script was the Indian equivalent of the Greek script that gave arise to a host of different systems. You can take a look at the evolution of Indian scripts, or the evolution of Southeast Asian scripts. Both of these pages are located at the very impressive site Languages and Scripts of India. You can also take a look at Asoka's edict at Girnar, inscribed in the Brahmi script.

Related Links

Aksara Brahmi 3 - 婆罗米文

Aksara Brahmi 3 - 婆罗米文


Brāhmī script


Brāhmī
Type abugida
Spoken languages Early Prakrit languages
Time period perhaps 6th, and certainly 3rd, century BCE, to c. 3rd century CE
Parent systems
Unclear. Indigenous or Aramaic (as follows) Proto-Sinaitic alphabet
Child systems Gupta, Pallava, and numerous others in the Brahmic family of scripts.
Sister systems Unclear. Per Aramaic hypothesis: Kharoshthi
Unicode range U+11000–U+1107F
ISO 15924 Brah
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

Brāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts.[citation needed] The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing. Recent discoveries have revealed earlier epigraphy in Tamil-Brahmi, a Southern Brahmic alphabet found on pottery in South India and Sri Lanka dating from before the 6th century BCE Sangam period. Southern Brahmi gave rise to Tamil Brahmi, Vatteluttu and Pallava Grantha scripts that diversified into many South East Asian scripts like the Mon script in Burma, the Javanese script in Indonesia and the Khmer script in Cambodia. 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. The script was deciphered in 1837 by James Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the British East India Company.[1] Like its contemporary in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, Kharoṣṭhī, Brāhmī was an abugida.
Brāhmī was ancestral to most of the scripts of South Asia and Southeast Asia, several Central Asian scripts such as Tibetan and Khotanese, and possibly, in part, Korean Hangul. The varga arrangement of Brāhmī was adopted as the modern order of Japanese kana, though the letters themselves are unrelated.[2]

Gupta script on stone Kanheri Caves

Contents



Origins




The origins of the Brahmi script are unclear. Several hypotheses have been proposed, but none are supported by enough evidence for agreement among scholars.
One consensus, based on Albrecht Weber (1856) and Georg Bühler's On the origin of the Indian Brahma alphabet (1895), sees Brāhmī deriving from the Imperial Aramaic script. As of 1996, this Aramaic hypothesis was still considered the most likely scenario.[3][4] However, it has never been conclusive, and continues to be debated, especially within India.
Some scholars, such as F. Raymond Allchin, take Brāhmī as a purely indigenous development, perhaps with the Bronze Age Indus script as its predecessor. The Indus hypothesis has been challenged for the lack of any intervening evidence for writing during the millennium and a half between the collapse of the Indus Valley civilisation ca. 1900 BCE and the first appearance of Brahmi in the mid-4th century BCE.[4]
Like Kharosthi, Brāhmī was used to write the early dialects of Prakrit. Surviving records of the script are mostly restricted to inscriptions on buildings and graves as well as liturgical texts. Sanskrit was not written until many centuries later, and as a result, Brāhmī is not a perfect match for Sanskrit; several Sanskrit sounds cannot be written in Brāhmī.

Aramaic hypothesis

The origin of Brāhmī remains doubtful. However, a weak consensus exists among scholars for link with Aramaic. According to the Aramaic hypothesis, the oldest Brāhmī inscriptions shows striking parallels with contemporary Aramaic for the sounds that are congruent between the two languages, especially if the letters are flipped to reflect the change in writing direction.[citation needed] (Aramaic is written from right to left, as was Brāhmī originally, whereas Brāhmī later came to be written left to right.) For example, both Brāhmī and Aramaic g resemble Λ; both Brāhmī and Aramaic t resemble ʎ, etc.
Brāhmī does feature a number of extensions to the Aramaic alphabet, as it was required to write more sounds. For example, Aramaic did not distinguish dental stops such as d from retroflex stops such as ḍ, and in Brāhmī the dental and retroflex series are graphically very similar, as if both had been derived from a single Aramaic prototype. Aramaic did not have Brāhmī’s aspirated consonants (kh, th, etc.), whereas Brāhmī did not have Aramaic's emphatic consonants (q, ṭ, ṣ – the dot diacritic here has a different meaning from the retroflex stops of Brāhmī), and it appears that these unneeded emphatic letters filled in for Brāhmī's aspirates: Aramaic q for Brāhmī kh, Aramaic (Θ) for Brāhmī th (ʘ), etc. And just where Aramaic did not have a corresponding emphatic stop, p, Brāhmī seems to have doubled up for the corresponding aspirate: Brāhmī p and ph are graphically very similar, as if taken from the same source in Aramaic p. The first letter of the two alphabets also match: Brāhmī a, which resembled a reversed κ, looks a lot like Aramaic alef, which resembled Hebrew א. The following table compares Brāhmī with Phoenician and Aramaic.

Possible derivation of Brāhmī from the Phoenician script
Greek Α Β Γ Δ Ε Υ Ζ
Phoenician Aleph Beth Gimel Daleth He Waw Zayin
Aramaic Aleph.svg Beth.svg Gimel.svg Daleth.svg He0.svg Waw.svg Zayin.svg
Brahmi Brahmi a.svg Brahmi b.svg Brahmi g.svg Brahmi dh.svg Brahmi ddh.svg  ? Brahmi v.svg Brahmi d.svg Brahmi dd.svg
Devanagari
Tamil
Kannada
IAST a ba ga dha ḍha va da ḍa

Greek Η Θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ
Phoenician Heth Teth Yodh Kaph Lamedh Mem Nun Samekh
Aramaic Heht.svg Teth.svg Yod.svg Kaph.svg Brahmi c.svg Lamed.svg Mem.svg Nun.svg Samekh.svg
Brahmi  ? Brahmi th.svg Brahmi tth.svg Brahmi y.svg Brahmi k.svg Brahmi c.svg Brahmi l.svg Brahmi m.svg Brahmi n.svg Brahmi nn.svg Brahmi sh.svg
Devanagari
Tamil ஶ்
Kannada
IAST tha ṭha ya ka ca la ma na ṇa śa*

Greek Ο Π Ϻ Ϙ Ρ Σ Τ
Phoenician Ayin Pe Sadek Qoph Res Sin Taw
Aramaic Ayin.svg Pe0.svg Sade 1.svg, Sade 2.svg Qoph.svg Resh.svg Shin.svg Taw.svg
Brahmi  ? Brahmi p.svg Brahmi ph.svg Brahmi s.svg Brahmi kh.svg Brahmi ch.svg Brahmi r.svg Brahmi ss.svg Brahmi t.svg Brahmi tt.svg
Devanagari
Tamil
Kannada
IAST pa pha sa* kha cha ra ṣa* ta ṭa


* Both Phoenician/Aramaic and Brahmi had three voiceless sibilantsants, but because the alphabetical ordering was lost, the correspondences among them are not clear.
Not accounted for are the six Brahmi consonants Brahmi bh.svg bh, Brahmi gh.svg gh, Brahmi h.svg h, Brahmi j.svg j, Brahmi jh.svg jh, Brahmi ny.svg ny, some of which could conceivable derive from the three Aramaic consonants with no obvious correspondence. (Brahmi Brahmi ng.svg ng was a later development.)

Pre-Ashokan epigraphy



Some common variants of Brahmic letters

The earliest likely contact of the Hindu Kush region with the Aramaic script occurred in the 6th century BCE with the expansion of the Achaemenid Empire under Darius the Great to the Indus valley. It appears that no use of any script to write an Indo-Aryan languages occurred before the reign of Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE, despite the evident example of Aramaic. Megasthenes, an ambassador to the Mauryan court only a quarter century before Ashoka, noted explicitly that the Indians "have no knowledge of written letters". This might be explained by the cultural importance at the time (and indeed to some extent today) of oral literature for history and Hindu scripture.
There have been claims that fragmentary of Brāhmī epigraphy found in Tamil Nadu[5] and Sri Lanka date as far back as the 5th or 6th century BCE,[6] which have been taken as evidence for an early spread of Buddhism.[4] However, evidence for pre-Mauryan Brahmi inscriptions remains inconclusive, restricted to pottery fragments with possible individual glyphs. The earliest complete inscriptions remain the 3rd-century-BCE Ashokan texts. Many early post-Ashokan remains show regional variation thought to have developed after a period of unity across India during the Ashokan period.

Ashokan inscriptions


Connections between Phoenician (4th column) and Brahmi (5th column). Note that 6th-to-4th-century BCE Aramaic (not shown) is in many cases intermediate in form between the two.

Brāhmī is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script for imperial edicts. It has commonly been supposed that the script was developed at around this time, both from the paucity of earlier dated examples, the alleged unreliability of those earlier dates, and from the geometric regularity of the script, which some have taken to be evidence that it had been recently invented.[7]

Early regional variants

The earliest Ashokan inscriptions are found across India—apart from the Kharosthi-writing northwest— e highly uniform. By the late third century BCE regional variants had developed, due to differences in writing materials and to the structures of the languages being written. For example, Tamil-Brahmi had a divergent system of vowel notation.
The earliest definite evidence of Brahmi script in South India comes from Bhattiprolu in Andhra Pradesh.[8][9] The Bhattiprolu script was written on an urn containing Buddhist relics, apparently in Prakrit and old Telugu. Twenty-three letters have been identified. The letters ga and sa are similar to Mauryan Brahmi, while bha and da resemble those of modern Telugu script.

Characteristics

The Brāhmī symbol for /ka/, modified to represent different vowels


Variants of Brahmi over time

Brāhmī is usually written from left to right, as in the case of its descendants. However, a coin of the 4th century BCE has been found inscribed with Brāhmī running from right to left, as in Aramaic.
Brāhmī is an abugida, meaning that each letter represents a consonant, while vowels are written with obligatory diacritics. When no vowel is written, the vowel /a/ is understood. Special conjunct consonants are used to write consonant clusters such as /pr/ or /rv/. In modern Devanagari conjunct consonant are written left to right to join them as one composite character whereas in Brāhmī characters are joined vertically downwards.
Vowels following a consonant are written by diacritics, but initial vowels have dedicated letters. There are three vowels in Brāhmī, /a, i, u/; long vowels are derived from the letters for short vowels. However, there are only five vowel diacritics, as short /a/ is understood if no vowel is written.

Punctuation[10]


Punctuation can be perceived as more of an exception than as a general rule in Asokan Brāhmī. For instance, distinct spaces in between the words appear frequently in the pillar edicts but not so much in others. ("Pillar edicts" refers to the texts that are inscribed on the stone pillars oftentimes with the intention of making them public.) The idea of writing each word separately was not consistently used.
In early Brāhmī period, the existence of punctuation marks is not very well shown. Each letter has been written independently with some space between words and edicts occasionally.
In the middle period, the system seems to be in progress. The use of a dash and a curved horizontal line is found. A flower mark seems to mark the end, and a circular mark appears to indicate the full stop. There seem to be varieties of full stop.
In the late period, the system of interpunctuation marks gets more complicated. For instance, there are four different forms of vertically slanted double dashes that resemble "//" to mark the completion of the composition. Despite all the decorative signs that were available during the late period, the signs remained fairly simple in the inscriptions. One of the possible reasons may be that engraving is restricted while writing is not.
Four basic forms of the punctuation marks can be cited as:
  • dash or horizontal bar
  • vertical bar
  • dot
  • circle

Descendants


Over the course of a millennium, Brāhmī developed into numerous regional scripts, commonly classified into a more rounded Southern India group and a more angular Northern India group. Over time, these regional scripts became associated with the local languages. Alphabets of the Southern group spread with Hinduism and Buddhism into Southeast Asia, while the Northern group spread into Tibet. Today descendants of Brāhmī are used throughout India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and in scattered enclaves in Indonesia, southern China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.[citation needed] As the script of Buddhist scripture, Brahmic alphabets are used for religious purposes throughout China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
Gary Ledyard has suggested that the basic letters of hangul were taken from the Phagspa script of the Mongol Empire, itself a derivative of the Brahmic Tibetan alphabet. Canadian Aboriginal syllabics also show systematic similarity with principles and characters of Brāhmī.

Etymology and legend of Brahmi

The name Brahmi is said to have come from a Jain Legend. According to South Indian legend the Jain thirthankara (monk) Vrushabhadeva explained the script to his daughters, Brahmi and Soundhary. Therefore as a mark of this, the writing script is called Brahmi and the numerals are called Soundhary.

Unicode

Brāhmī was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0.
The Unicode block for Brāhmī is U+11000 ... U+1107F:

Brahmi[1]
Unicode.org chart (PDF)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+1100x �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��
U+1101x �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��
U+1102x �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��
U+1103x �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��
U+1104x �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��
U+1105x �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��
U+1106x �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��
U+1107x
Notes
1.
^ As of Unicode version 6.0  

See also


References

  1. ^ More details about Buddhist monuments at Sanchi, Archaeological Survey of India, 1989.
  2. ^ Daniels & Bright, The World's Writing Systems, Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-507993-0
  3. ^ Richard Salomon, "Brahmi and Kharoshthi", in The World's Writing Systems
  4. ^ a b c Salomon, Richard, On The Origin Of The Early Indian Scripts: A Review Article. Journal of the American Oriental Society 115.2 (1995), 271-279
  5. ^ Subramanian, T.S., Skeletons, script found at ancient burial site in Tamil Nadu
  6. ^ Recent claims for earlier dates include fragments of pottery from the trading town of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, which have been dated to between the 6th and the early 4th centuries BCE (Salomon 1998); from Bhattiprolu;[1] and on pieces of pottery in Adichanallur, Tamil Nadu, which have been radio-carbon dated to the 6th century BCE (Subramanian 2004).
  7. ^ Richard Salomon, "Brahmi and Kharoshthi", in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems
  8. ^ "The Bhattiprolu Inscriptions", G. Buhler, 1894, Epigraphica Indica, Vol.2
  9. ^ Buddhist Inscriptions of Andhradesa, Dr. B.S.L Hanumantha Rao, 1998, Ananda Buddha Vihara Trust, Secunderabad
  10. ^ Ram Sharma, Brāhmī Script: Development in North-Western India and Central Asia, 2002

Further reading

  • Kenneth R. Norman, The Development of Writing in India and its Effect upon the Pâli Canon, in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens (36), 1993
  • Oscar von Hinüber, Der Beginn der Schrift und frühe Schriftlichkeit in Indien, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990 (in German)
  • Gérard Fussman, Les premiers systèmes d'écriture en Inde, in Annuaire du Collège de France 1988–1989 (in French)
  • Siran Deraniyagala, The prehistory of Sri Lanka; an ecological perspective (revised ed.), Archaeological Survey Department of Sri Lanka, 1992.

External links