Brahmi script
Brahmi is the modern name given to one of the oldest writing systems used in the Indian subcontinent and in Central Asia during the final centuries BCE and the early centuries CE. Like its contemporary, Kharoṣṭhī, which was used in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is an abugida.
The best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to 250–232 BCE. The script was deciphered in 1837 by James Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the East India Company. The origin of the script is still much debated, with current Western academic opinion generally agreeing (with some exceptions) that Brahmi was derived from or at least influenced by one or more contemporary Semitic scripts, but a current of opinion in India favors the idea that it is connected to the much older and as-yet undeciphered Indus script.
Brahmi was at one time referred to in English as the "pin-man" script, that is "stick figure" script. It was denoted by a variety of other names until the 1880s when Albert Étienne Jean Baptiste Terrien de Lacouperie, based on an observation by Gabriel Devéria, associated it with the Brahmi script, the first in a list of scripts mentioned in the Lalitavistara Sūtra. Thence the name was adopted in the influential work of Georg Bühler, albeit in the variant form "Brahma". The Gupta script of the 5th century is sometimes called "Late Brahmi".
Brahmi (Unicode block)
Brahmi is a Unicode block containing characters written in India from the 3rd century BCE through the first millennium CE. It is the predecessor to all modern Indic scripts.
References
Brahmi (disambiguation)
Brahmi may refer to:
