Devanagari facts for kids

Rigveda, example of abugida script

Devanāgarī (देवनागरी) is an abugida script used to write many North Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Nepal Bhasa and Nepali from Nepal and sometimes Kashmiri. About a hundred smaller languages also use Devanāgarī.

Images for kids

Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī Sūtra in Siddham on palm-leaf in 609 CE. Hōryū-ji, Japan. The last line is a complete Sanskrit syllabary in Siddhaṃ script.
Vowel diacritics on क
The Jnanesvari is a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, dated to 1290 CE. It is in written in Marathi using Devanagari script.
A few palm leaves from the Buddhist Sanskrit text Shisyalekha composed in the 5th century by Candragomin. Shisyalekha was written in Devanagari script by a Nepalese scribe in 1084 CE (above). The manuscript is in the Cambridge University library.
A mid 10th-century college land grant in Devanagari inscription (Sanskrit) discovered on a buried, damaged stone in north Karnataka. Parts of the inscription are in Canarese script.
Indic scripts share common features, and along with Devanagari, all major Indic scripts have been historically used to preserve Vedic and post-Vedic Sanskrit texts.
Devanagari INSCRIPT bilingual keyboard layout
Devanagari Phonetic Keyboard Layout