Editing Sanskrit (section)

== Writing system ==
{{further|Brahmi script|Devanagari}}
[[File:828 CE Sanskrit manuscript page, Gupta script, Nepal, Pārameśvaratantra (MS Add.1049.1).jpg|thumb|One of the oldest surviving Sanskrit manuscript pages in Gupta script ({{circa|828&nbsp;CE}}), discovered in [[Nepal]]]]

The early history of writing Sanskrit and other languages in ancient India is a problematic topic despite a century of scholarship, states [[Richard G. Salomon (professor of Asian studies)|Richard Salomon]] – an epigraphist and Indologist specializing in Sanskrit and Pali literature.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|p=10}} The earliest possible script from South Asia is from the [[Indus Valley civilization]] (3rd/2nd millennium BCE), but this script – if it is a script – remains undeciphered. If any scripts existed in the Vedic period, they have not survived. Scholars generally accept that Sanskrit was spoken in an oral society, and that an [[oral tradition]] preserved the extensive Vedic and Classical Sanskrit literature.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=7–10, 86}} Other scholars such as Jack Goody argue that the Vedic Sanskrit texts are not the product of an oral society, basing this view by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek (Greco-Sanskrit), Serbian, and other cultures. This minority of scholars argue that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without having been written down.{{sfn|Goody|1987|pp=110–121}}<ref name=lopez1995p21>{{harvnb|Donald S. Lopez Jr.|1995|pp=21–47}}</ref><ref name="njallen">{{cite book |title=Arjuna–Odysseus: Shared Heritage in Indian and Greek Epic|author=N. J. Allen|year=2019|publisher=Taylor & Francis|page=364}}</ref>

''[[Lipi (script)|Lipi]]'' is the term in Sanskrit which means "writing, letters, alphabet". It contextually refers to scripts, the art or any manner of writing or drawing.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|p=11}} The term, in the sense of a writing system, appears in some of the earliest Buddhist, Hindu, and Jaina texts. [[Pāṇini]]'s ''Astadhyayi'', composed sometime around the 5th or 4th century BCE, for example, mentions ''lipi'' in the context of a writing script and education system in his times, but he does not name the script.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|p=11}}<ref name="Juhyung Rhi 2009 5, 1–13"/><ref>{{cite book|author1=Rita Sherma|author2=Arvind Sharma|title=Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Toward a Fusion of Horizons|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x4eXRvwyvtMC|year=2008|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-1-4020-8192-7|page=235}};<br />{{cite book|author=Takao Hayashi|editor=Gavin Flood|title=The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SKBxa-MNqA8C|year=2008|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-0-470-99868-7|page=365|access-date=3 August 2018|archive-date=29 March 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329144114/https://books.google.com/books?id=SKBxa-MNqA8C|url-status=live}}</ref> Several early Buddhist and Jaina texts, such as the ''[[Lalitavistara Sūtra]]'' and ''Pannavana Sutta'' include lists of numerous writing scripts in ancient India.{{efn|The Buddhist text ''[[Lalitavistara Sūtra]]'' describes the young Siddhartha—the future [[Buddha]]—to have mastered philology and scripts at a school from Brahmin Lipikara and Deva Vidyasinha.<ref name=nado95>{{cite journal |first=Lopon |last=Nado |year=1982 |title=The development of language in Bhutan |journal=The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies |volume=5 |number=2 |page=95 |quote=Under different teachers, such as the Brahmin Lipikara and Deva Vidyasinha, he mastered Indian philology and scripts. According to Lalitavistara, there were as many as sixty-four scripts in India.}}</ref>}} The Buddhist texts list the sixty four ''lipi'' that the Buddha knew as a child, with the Brahmi script topping the list. "The historical value of this list is however limited by several factors", states Salomon. The list may be a later interpolation.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=8–9 with footnotes}}{{efn|A version of this list of sixty-four ancient Indian scripts is found in the Chinese translation of an Indian Buddhist text, and this translation has been dated to 308 CE.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=8–9}}}} The [[Jainism|Jain]] canonical texts such as the ''Pannavana Sutta'' – probably older than the Buddhist texts – list eighteen writing systems, with the Brahmi topping the list and Kharotthi (Kharoshthi) listed as fourth. The Jaina text elsewhere states that the "Brahmi is written in 18&nbsp;different forms", but the details are lacking.{{sfn|Salomon|1998}} However, the reliability of these lists has been questioned and the empirical evidence of writing systems in the form of Sanskrit or Prakrit inscriptions dated prior to the 3rd&nbsp;century&nbsp;BCE has not been found. If the ancient surfaces for writing Sanskrit were palm leaves, tree bark and cloth – the same as those in later times – these have not survived.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=8–14}}{{efn|The Greek [[Nearchus|Nearchos]] who visited ancient India with the army of [[Alexander the Great]] in the 4th&nbsp;century&nbsp;BCE, mentions that Indians wrote on cloth, but Nearchos could have confused Aramaic writers with the Indians.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=11–12}}}} According to Salomon, many find it difficult to explain the "evidently high level of political organization and cultural complexity" of ancient India without a writing system for Sanskrit and other languages.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=8–14}}{{efn|Salomon writes, in ''The World's Writing Systems'' (edited by Peter Daniels), that "many scholars feel that the origins of these scripts must have gone back further than this [mid-3rd&nbsp;century&nbsp;BCE Ashoka inscriptions], but there is no conclusive proof".{{sfn|Daniels|1996|pp=371–372}} }}

The oldest datable writing systems for Sanskrit are the [[Brahmi script|Brāhmī script]], the related [[Kharosthi|Kharoṣṭhī script]] and the Brahmi derivatives.{{sfn|Daniels|1996|pp=373–374, 376–378}}{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=14–16}} The Kharosthi was used in the northwestern part of South Asia and it became extinct, while the Brahmi was used all over the subcontinent along with regional scripts such as Old Tamil.{{sfn|Daniels|1996|pp=373–375}} Of these, the earliest records in the Sanskrit language are in Brahmi, a script that later evolved into numerous related Indic scripts for Sanskrit, along with Southeast Asian scripts (Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, others) and many extinct Central Asian scripts such as those discovered along with the [[Kharosthi]] in the Tarim Basin of western China and in [[Uzbekistan]].{{sfn|Daniels|1996|pp=373–376}} The most extensive inscriptions that have survived into the modern era are the rock edicts and pillar inscriptions of the 3rd&nbsp;century&nbsp;BCE Mauryan emperor [[Ashoka]], but these are not in Sanskrit.{{sfn|Daniels|1996|pp=373–374}}{{efn|Minor inscriptions discovered in the 20th century may be older, but their dating is uncertain.{{sfn|Daniels|1996|pp=373–374}}}}

===Scripts===
Over the centuries, and across countries, a number of scripts have been used to write Sanskrit.

====Brahmi script====
{{main|Brahmi script}}
[[File:Hathibada Brahmi Inscription at Nagari, Hinduism Sanskrit India.jpg|thumb|260px|upright=1.28|One of the oldest Hindu Sanskrit{{efn|Salomon states that the inscription has a few scribal errors, but is essentially standard Sanskrit.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=86–87}}}} inscriptions, the broken pieces of this early-1st-century BCE [[Hathibada Ghosundi Inscriptions|Hathibada Brahmi Inscription]] were discovered in Rajasthan. It is a dedication to deities [[Vāsudeva]]-[[Samkarshana]] ([[Krishna]]-[[Balarama]]) and mentions a stone temple.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=86–87}}<ref>{{cite book|author=Charles Higham|title=Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H1c1UIEVH9gC|year=2014|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=978-1-4381-0996-1|page=294|access-date=7 August 2018|archive-date=15 January 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230115081256/https://books.google.com/books?id=H1c1UIEVH9gC|url-status=live}}</ref>]]
The Brahmi script for writing Sanskrit is a "modified consonant-syllabic" script. The graphic syllable is its basic unit, and this consists of a consonant with or without diacritic modifications.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=14–16}} Since the vowel is an integral part of the consonants, and given the efficiently compacted, fused consonant cluster morphology for Sanskrit words and grammar, the Brahmi and its derivative writing systems deploy ligatures, diacritics and relative positioning of the vowel to inform the reader how the vowel is related to the consonant and how it is expected to be pronounced for clarity.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=14–16}}{{sfn|Daniels|1996|pp=376–380}}{{efn|Salomon illustrates this for the consonant ''ka'' which is written as "[[File:Brahmi k.svg|15px]]" in the Brahmi script and "क" in the Devanagari script, the vowel is marked together with the consonant before as in "कि", after "का", above "के" or below "कृ".{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=14–16}}}} This feature of Brahmi and its modern Indic script derivatives makes it difficult to classify it under the main script types used for the writing systems for most of the world's languages, namely logographic, syllabic and alphabetic.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=14–16}}

====Nagari script====
{{Devanagari abugida sidebar}}
{{main|Devanagari|Nandinagari|Nāgarī script}}
Many modern era manuscripts are written and available in the Nagari script, whose form is attestable to the 1st millennium&nbsp;CE.{{sfn|Dhanesh Jain|George Cardona|2007|pp=68–70 in Chapter 3 by Salomon}} The Nagari script is the ancestor of [[Devanagari]] (north India), [[Nandinagari]] (south India) and other variants. The Nāgarī script was in regular use by 7th century&nbsp;CE, and had fully evolved into Devanagari and Nandinagari<ref>{{cite report |chapter-url=https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/13002-nandinagari.pdf |chapter=Nandanagiri |title=Unicode Standards |year=2013 |id=13002 |access-date=6 August 2018 |archive-date=9 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210309054659/https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2013/13002-nandinagari.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> scripts by about the end of the first millennium of the common era.<ref name=kathleen>{{cite book |first=Kathleen |last=Kuiper |year=2010 |title=The Culture of India |place=New York, NY |publisher=The Rosen Publishing Group |isbn=978-1615301492 |page=83}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Richard |last=Salomon |year=2014 |title=Indian Epigraphy |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0195356663 |pages=33–47}}</ref> The Devanagari script, states Banerji, became more popular for Sanskrit in India since about the 18th century.<ref>{{cite book |author=Sures Chandra Banerji |title=A Companion to Sanskrit Literature |year=1989 |publisher=Motilal Banarsidass |isbn=978-81-208-0063-2 |pages=671–672 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JkOAEdIsdUsC&pg=PA672 |access-date=6 August 2018 |archive-date=29 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329143940/https://books.google.com/books?id=JkOAEdIsdUsC&pg=PA672#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref> However, Sanskrit does have special historical connection to the Nagari script as attested by the epigraphical evidence.{{sfn|Dhanesh Jain|George Cardona|2007|pp=70, 75–77 in Chapter 3 by Salomon}}

The Nagari script used for Classical Sanskrit has the fullest repertoire of characters consisting of fourteen vowels and thirty three consonants. For Vedic Sanskrit, it has two more allophonic consonantal characters (the intervocalic ळ ''ḷa'', and ळ्ह ''ḷha'').{{sfn|Dhanesh Jain|George Cardona|2007|pp=75–77 in Chapter 3 by Salomon}} To communicate phonetic accuracy, it also includes several modifiers such as the ''anusvara'' dot and the ''visarga'' double dot, punctuation symbols and others such as the ''halanta'' sign.{{sfn|Dhanesh Jain|George Cardona|2007|pp=75–77 in Chapter 3 by Salomon}}

====Other writing systems====
{{brahmic}}
[[File:Phrase sanskrit.svg|thumb|260px|upright=1.35|Sanskrit in modern Indian and other Brahmi scripts: ''May [[Shiva|Śiva]] bless those who take delight in the language of the gods.'' ([[Kālidāsa]])]]
Other scripts such as [[Gujarati alphabet|Gujarati]], [[Bengali-Assamese script|Bangla-Assamese]], [[Odia alphabet|Odia]] and major south Indian scripts, states Salomon, "have been and often still are used in their proper territories for writing Sanskrit".{{sfn|Dhanesh Jain|George Cardona|2007|pp=68–70 in Chapter 3 by Salomon}} These and many Indian scripts look different to the untrained eye, but the differences between Indic scripts is "mostly superficial and they share the same phonetic repertoire and systemic features", states Salomon.{{sfn|Dhanesh Jain|George Cardona|2007|pp=70–78 in Chapter 3 by Salomon}} They all have essentially the same set of eleven to fourteen vowels and thirty-three consonants as established by the Sanskrit language and attestable in the Brahmi script. Further, a closer examination reveals that they all have the similar basic graphic principles, the same ''varnamala'' (literally, "garland of letters") alphabetic ordering following the same logical phonetic order, easing the work of historic skilled scribes writing or reproducing Sanskrit works across South Asia.{{sfn|Dhanesh Jain|George Cardona|2007|pp=70–71, 75–76 in Chapter&nbsp;3 by Salomon}}{{efn|Salomon states that these shared graphic principles that combine syllabic and alphabetic writing are distinctive for Indic scripts when contrasted with other major world languages. The only known similarity is found in the Ethiopic scripts, but Ethiopic system lacks clusters and the Indic set of full vowels signs.{{sfn|Dhanesh Jain|George Cardona|2007|pp=70–71 in Chapter&nbsp;3 by Salomon}} }}

[[File:Mandakapattu Inscription.jpg|thumb|260px|left|One of the earliest known Sanskrit inscriptions in Tamil Grantha script at a rock-cut Hindu Trimurti temple ([[Mandagapattu Temple|Mandakapattu]], {{Circa|615&nbsp;CE}})]]
In the south, where [[Dravidian languages]] predominate, scripts used for Sanskrit include the [[Kannada alphabet|Kannada]], [[Telugu script|Telugu]], [[Malayalam script|Malayalam]] and [[Grantha alphabet]]s.

=== Transliteration schemes, Romanisation ===
{{Main|Devanagari transliteration|International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration}}
Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has been [[transliteration|transliterated]] using the [[Latin alphabet]]. The system most commonly used today is the IAST ([[International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration]]), which has been the academic standard since 1888. [[ASCII]]-based transliteration schemes have also evolved because of difficulties representing Sanskrit characters in computer systems. These include [[Harvard-Kyoto]] and [[ITRANS]], a transliteration scheme that is used widely on the Internet, especially in Usenet and in email, for considerations of speed of entry as well as rendering issues. With the wide availability of [[Unicode]]-aware web browsers, IAST has become common online. It is also possible to type using an [[alphanumeric keyboard]] and transliterate to Devanagari using software like Mac OS X's international support.

===Epigraphy===
{{main|Sanskrit epigraphy}}
{{transclusion notice|source=Sanskrit epigraphy}}
{{excerpt|Sanskrit epigraphy|paragraphs=1|references=no|inline=yes|hat=yes}}{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=86–87}}{{sfn|Quintanilla|2007|pp=260}}

{{excerpt|Sanskrit epigraphy|paragraphs=3-3|references=no|templates=-multiple image |inline=yes}}{{sfn|Court|1996|pp=445–448}}{{sfn|Masica|1993|pp=143–144}}{{sfn|Salomon|1998|pp=92–93}}