Nāgarī script

Etymology

Nagari is a vṛddhi derivation from नगर (hi), which means city.

Origins

The Nāgarī script appeared in ancient India as a central-eastern variant of the Gupta script (whereas Śāradā was the western variety and Siddham was the far eastern variety). In turn it branched off into several scripts, such as Devanagari and Nandinagari.

Usage outside India

The 7th century Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo ordered that all foreign books be transcribed into the Tibetan language, and sent his ambassador Tonmi Sambota to India to acquire alphabetic and writing methods, who returned with a Sanskrit Nāgarī script from Kashmir corresponding to twenty-four (24) Tibetan sounds and innovating new symbols for six (6) local sounds.

The museum in Mrauk-u (Mrohaung) in the Rakhine state of Myanmar held in 1972 two examples of Nāgarī script. Archaeologist Aung Thaw describes these inscriptions, associated with the Chandra, or Candra, dynasty that first hailed from the ancient Indian city of Vesáli:

File:Copper plates NMND-1.JPG|Coppern plates in Nāgarī script, 1035 CE File:Nagari Script 01.jpg|Nagari Script 01 File:Nagari Script 02.jpg|Nagari Script 02

References

References

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7. Tripathi, Kunjabihari. (1962). "The Evolution of Oriya Language and Script". Utkal University.
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12. Pandey, Anshuman. (2017). [https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17162-nandinagari.pdf ''Final proposal to encode Nandinagari in Unicode''.]
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14. William Woodville Rockhill, {{Google books. avFDAQAAMAAJ. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution
15. (1972). "Historical sites in Burma". Ministry of Union Culture, Government of the Union of Burma.