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Front Matter
Devanagari देवनागरी
The "script of the city of gods" — from Sanskrit to Hindi, 120 languages bound under a single headline.
Devanagari is South Asia's largest script, writing ~120 languages including Sanskrit, Hindi, and Marathi. Its name means "city script of the gods" (deva=divine, nagari=urban script), reaching its current form around the 11th century. An abugida where each consonant inherently contains a vowel, it features a distinctive horizontal headline (śirorekha) atop words. Over 600 million people read and write it today.
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Primary Artifact
Isha Upanishad · Shukla Yajurveda
Devanagari Sanskrit manuscript · Upanishad verses 1–3
Full
Headline
Close-up
— Shukla Yajurveda Upanishad · Sanskrit set in Devanagari
Devanagari's visual identity is the horizontal headline (śirorekhā) drawn across the top of each word, from which the letters appear to hang. It became the standard script for Vedic Sanskrit literature — the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and Yoga Sutras have all been transmitted in this script.
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The Letters
Signs · Unicode · TypesSample GlyphsClick to copy
Glyph evolution
Form change over time
Loading evolution data…
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Reading Mechanics
Direction · Method↔
Direction
Left to Right (LTR)
좌→우 (LTR). 단어 위에 수평선(시로레카)으로 연결.
α
System
Abugida
⌨
Input method
Inscript 키보드 레이아웃 (인도 표준). 로마자 음역 입력도 지원(Google IME 등).
Keyboard layout
Standard IME · input chart
Devanagari InScript Layout
Indian standard InScript. Consonant-based with combining vowel marks.
ौ
ै
ा
ी
ू
ब
ह
ग
द
ज
ो
े
्
ि
ु
प
र
क
त
च
ॉ
ॆ
ँ
ं
म
न
व
ल
स
य
space
⌫
💡 Vowel marks (matras) combine with consonants. Romanized input (Google IME) also widely used.
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The Lineage
Family · DescendantsPhylogeny
Descendants of hieroglyphs
Phylogeny
Related scripts
Ancestors · Descendants · Family
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